Afraid of the Dark
by Vixen Argentum
Summary: A three-shot piece detailing the evolution of Akon's relationships with Mayuri. See more detailed synopsis inside. Ratings will change as the story progresses.
1. Night Into Day

**A/N**

This is a three-part story dealing with Akon's relationship with Mayuri over time. Here is a quick synopsis of the three parts:

**Night into Day** (Dark PG): A young Akon meets Mayuri in the Maggot's Nest. While everyone else changes and perverts...one man stays the same.  
><strong>Day into Night<strong> (Gory T): Mayuri grows into his captaincy; a teenage Akon grows into himself.  
><strong>Michikake<strong> (Sexy M): All knowledge is worth knowing-yes, even that kind! Nothing lasts forever, but what is learned is immortal. Adult material will be included~!

Written as a much belated gift for rezh. I told you I'd get this done one day. :)

* * *

><p>Akon was afraid of the dark.<p>

The blackness gripped his neck with cold sweat slimy fingers. It whispered its hissing voice into his ears no matter how small of a ball he pulled himself into or how hard he pressed his hands to his head, trying to block out the sound. Instead, his heartbeat thundered louder and louder in his skull, his clothing plastered itself to his back. He dug his fingernails into his forearms, forming perfect little half-moon divots in the skin, then blood, then later, scars.

It was night; the lone high window revealed a narrow swath of sky.

Akon welcomed the light, but he did not welcome the fullness of the moon. This light was unclean, it cast illusions over everything it touched, raising monsters in its path. Only he was smart enough to not listen to the lies that came streaming through the glass.

The usual moaning of the Maggot's Nest was now distilled into words.

"Come here, child" a voice purred. "I'll give you comfort!"

"Have you come for me? Stop it! I'll kill you! In here, they'll never find the body!"

"But nii-san said we could go to the store! Don't you love me anymore?"

A few other people lay huddled up against the walls. They were normal for now, but Akon had studied them all. He saw the numbers written across their foreheads. The one in the corner had a year. The one under the table, he gave 6-weeks. The one by the door was already starting to rock back and forth on his heels, grinning like some perverse jack-o-lantern—he probably wouldn't last the night.

If there was one thing that Akon understood, it was nature. The biology of the body and the electricity of the mind were connected by the same ether, regardless of species. Here, he was little more than prey.

Akon melded to the shadows, back against the stone, as he made his way to his hiding place. There was a grate cover leading to a long forgotten pipe that was a bit loose. It was not large enough to provide for any type of escape, but still had a small, crawlspace-like opening that later narrowed into a tube just smaller than his fist. If he curled up into the fetal position, there was a generous enough amount of room on all sides, making it easy for him to pull the grate back over the entrance.

xXx

Once more, the moon was full. The chaos swirled and burbled out from the cracks in the walls with the advent of sundown. The hands reached for him, again and again. He could feel the rough fingers that had grasped the loose fabric between his shoulder blades. Desperately, Akon wriggled and fought, dropping to the ground, clawing at the floor.

"Where you going? Why so soon?" The eerie high pitched voice asked.

Akon gained his freedom after biting into the man's forearm. The world wheeled around him, and the most primitive parts of his brain took over, seeing not the people around him, but the spaces between them. It knew nothing of airy moralities and pride induced restrictions; instead it analyzed speeds, distances and probabilities of success. The widest path led between two tables and toward the mouth of a darkened hallway. Dark was danger, but dark was cover.

The frenzied slapping of the man's bare feet on the floor came to an abrupt stop. Akon placed a hand on the wall and turned around to face his pursuer. He, like all of the other inmates, did not dare to cross a certain invisible line burned seemingly in a 3 meter radius from the hallway entrance. Now that he had paused, he realized that he had never been to this area of the prison. It was always desolate, and Akon preferred to spend the daytime in a supervised group and the night holed away.

"Don't go in there!" The snaggletoothed man's face was stuck in an unbecoming mixture of crazed and concern. "He's dangerous."

Akon staggered backwards. Crazy though the man was, the sincerity behind the remark was palpable.

"Not normal, that one." He nervously crossed his arms over his chest. "Please?" He began to cry. "I won't do you no harm."

The hallway was even darker than the rest of the prison. Akon bit his lip. He tripped and stumbled and crawled anyway. He drew his strength from the stone itself. With each step forward, the moaning and the screaming blurred and softened until it died away completely.

The dim sound of electric power cut through the air and faint blue lights flickered twice before turning on completely. Akon sighed with relief.

"Who's there?" A sharp tenor voice called out.

Akon froze.

"Well, come here. Let me look at you. I haven't got all night." The faint sound of a foot tapping echoed off the walls.

Akon knit his brows together. _I haven't got all night?_ As far as Akon could remember, the Maggot's nest was a life sentence. Technically the man at the end of the hall _did_ have all night as well as all _day_, all _week_, all _month_, and all _year_, from now until the day his corpse was carried out in a body bag.

"You know I can see your shadow. These lights are triggered by the presence of soul power and weight. You have already disturbed my time for solitary thinking, and if I didn't know better, I would think that you were insulting my intelligence by huddling in plain sight."

There was no anger in the words, only annoyance. But still, there was something dangerous underneath the words. The threat was both real and empty.

Akon stepped forward. He made his best effort to stand as tall as his tiny body would allow him, but he still quivered around the edges.

A pair of yellow eyes stared back at him from behind soul-iron bars. The man had pale features, with a black eye mask stretching from one absent ear to another. As far as he could tell, the shinigami on the other side was displaying no emotion other than pure boredom. Akon took one step closer, but then staggered half a step back. He knew that boredom was the most dangerous emotion of all.

"Oh," the figure said. "You're just a child." He sighed.

"At least you don't appear to speak much. Much better than that insufferable guard who just will not shut his gob and mind his own business."

He rubbed one of the metal knobs that covered the area where an ear should have been. It echoed when he tapped it. Akon's eyes widened a little. It truly was hollow.

The strange shinigami sighed and reached for a stack of papers that had been stuffed under a corner of his mattress and then produced a pencil. He began to scratch heavily written letters over the paper, the vertical strokes much more pronounced than the horizontal ones. Akon could even hear the man's rhythmic breathing echo from the walls of the small, acoustically reflective chamber, and it sounded in time with the rest of him. It was as if he was a perfectly tuned machine, with a perfect flow of output and a perfect influx of fuel. And of course, this was in perfect rhythm with the eyes that appeared to flash at the culmination of each saccade.

Akon had seen many men write; he had even watched a few calligraphers as they created their wares…but it was nothing like this.

_Crack! _

The tip of the pencil shattered and then the writing utensil was subsequently hurled against the wall behind Akon's head. Akon flinched as he was now staring into a face that simultaneously displayed anger, exasperation, and disbelief. The man's upper lip twitched, but only slightly.

"Though I am pleased that you do not fill the air with pointless conversation, the staring is very, very annoying." The tone of his voice was tightly focused. "I am not a zoo animal, so do not treat me as such."

Akon looked away, down at the far corner of the cell. He felt embarrassed; he should have known better. But still, as his mind had always been trained, a subject worthy of study attended from the background—leaping for his attention like night from day. Akon wasn't at all something worthy of holding this man's attention; he could feel it. But still, he couldn't stay away from the things he wanted to know, even when they were dangerous. Especially when they were dangerous… After all, that was why he was here.

After the sound of paper rustling, the scribbling noise returned and Akon closed his eyes. His body leaned back, searching for a wall, and it landed noiselessly. There were no more screams; he couldn't hear his heart. It was only a deep peace that flooded him.

"Let me stay here." Akon was surprised at forcefulness behind his voice, but he was even more surprised that he had said anything at all.

The scribbling stopped.

"What?"

Akon looked up at him. He wasn't staring into an angry face at all. In fact, he had no words to describe the expression on the man's face. If he had to define it, it would be…shock.

"Please?" Akon wrung his hands.

The corners of Mayuri's already naturally downturned mouth plunged lower. "Do you always go barging into the personal space of people you don't even know? I've already told you, I am not here to amuse you."

"It's quiet," said Akon. His throat tightened at the remembrance of the common area.

Mayuri's features softened slightly, but were still twisted into a definite scowl. He raised a hand, let it hang in the air for a second and then set it down. He turned away. "As long as you _keep_ it quiet, you may stay."

"Thank you." The man waved the comment away.

"Your name?"

"Huh?"

"Your name, you have one, don't you? Though I have few problems with calling you "child", most people appear to get aggravated by this."

"Oh. Akon."

"Just Akon?"

The boy nodded.

"Fine. Good enough. "The man straightened up. "I am Kurotsuchi Mayuri. I suppose you could say that I'm the most dangerous one here."

The man shuffled to a new place in the stack of papers, this page already heavily notated in blue. He muttered a hearty _"What on earth has this dandy been smoking?"_ and continued to work.

xXx

After the first night, Akon spent the night huddled up in the farthest corner.

The third time, he lay sprawled out in a corner a little bit closer.

If he angled his head right, he could see the Mayuri's hands as they scribbled things down on sheets of paper. The scratch of the pen on the parchment both lulled him to sleep and kept the twisted, screaming dreams away.

In a week, Akon dared to rest a mere five feet from the bars. Gazing up at him from the floor, he didn't understand what was so dangerous about that man. The aura that emanated from him was unbelievably dark, but it pulsed steadily, like a heartbeat. It never wavered, and it had a constant, controlled rhythm of energy. While the other people entered and vanished outside of this little, forgotten wing, he always stayed the same. Dare he say that it was comforting?

It occurred to Akon that he had no idea how long Mayuri had been in here. In the mornings, when he emerged from the hall to join the daily activities, everybody kept their distance. They all knew where he had been, and they were wary. Perhaps that was the part that was truly scary to everyone in Maggot's Nest. He was one of two people who had entered through those accursed doors who had refused to lose their minds. He welcomed the space—the ambient touch of a crowd had never appealed to him. He needed room to think, room to breathe.

On the 3rd morning of the second week, Akon woke up to find a blanket that had been tossed on top of him. Surprised, he sat up. Two patient, yet impatient eyes stared back at him. He gulped.

"When you're cold, your teeth chatter," he spat. "The rattling is so annoying that it thoroughly destroys any hope I had of sleeping."

Mayuri sighed and put a hand on his hip.

"Really, if you're going to stay here every night, you should bring your own stuff. You're lucky I don't just make you leave."

Akon smiled. Somehow the words made him warm inside. Yes Akon was very lucky. He nodded.

"Now would you please get out of here? It's morning. I have work to do. I don't play with children."

Akon nodded and skittered down the hallway into the commons.

xXx

Akon squinted up at the high, tiny window, where the sunlight had already turned red, purple and blue, like a great celestial bruise. Already, he could see it in the sky, waiting for the chance to work its craft. He had already moved in his blanket and futon. Today, he had bundled up the remaining things that he had stored in his little cubby—an old leather-bound qualitative methods book that smelled of latex-gloved hands, a light jacket, and a small wrench that he had found shoved deep down the vent pipe.

Today would mark the 29.54 day anniversary of that meeting, one full lunar month. To Akon, that was a much more natural way to count the time that passed than day by day. Counting days was as arbitrary as measuring the temperature of human blood Celsius or Kelvins—but one was infinitely more accurate and useful. Counting the days gave a false sense of one was to move forward, on to something brighter. But really, here was like the doldrums, waxing and waning, but always returning to the same place to repeat the same eternal cycle, much like the people and the ever changing staff.

The lights were on all the way down at the end of the hall, making the entrance glow almost a faint blue.

Akon stiffened. Who the hell was down there? Who was in his place, stealing his peace? He gripped the wrench. The tips were dull, but all that would matter was a well placed hit… If he missed, a bone would be broken and then he could go in to rip out the soft skin. Right on the inside of the thigh, where the blood beat shallow yet strong, he could rip…

The wrench clattered to the floor. A few bystanders glanced over to see what the noise was, but then quickly turned away. Panting, he stepped back, away from the wrench. What was he thinking? Was this place finally going to eat swallow him too?

No. He wouldn't let it.

Akon tucked it away into his obi. He wouldn't let it be held in his hands…not when they had a mind of their own. He crept softly, rolling heel and toe, heel and toe down to the source.

Laughter.

He froze. Now he could hear a voice coming from the end of the hallway.

"There it is, Mayuri-san!" It sounded familiar, but Akon simply couldn't place it.

A voice answered that could only belong to Mayuri. "But that's preposterous."

"No, no! It's completely true! I tested it out myself and wrote it all down!"

"Rubbish."

The voice that did not belong to Mayuri had a slight lilt to it. It was warm, inviting almost, yet there was a strained quality—like the thoughts behind it were being processed at the same time as he was speaking. Where had he heard it? He slunk closer down the hall, pressing himself against the wall as he reached the corner.

"Awww. Don't be that way, Mayuri-san!" The blond man gesticulated wildly before taking a seat on Mayuri's cot.

Mayuri's cot? That was right! The bars had been raised and the two of them were only inches from each other.

It was a second division uniform. With that sun bleached hair, it could only be…the leader of the punishment squad, Urahara Kisuke! What was he doing here?

Mayuri grumbled. "There's something wrong with this entire abstract. It is so poorly conceived. And the wording is so terrible that the 11th squad could have created it, that is if any of them know how to write!"

"Aha! My bad. That night was a bit wild." Urahara laughed and hid his mouth behind a hand. "Just say the word, and I'll bring the party in here to you!"

"No." Mayuri crossed his arms. "Absolutely not". Under his breath he whispered. "Who am I kidding…most of the time, you do it anyway. It's like you live in a constant Bacchanalia."

"No, no, look! I put the proofs on the back, you know? Unless you change the concentration of the enzymes after you stabilize the catabolic rates, it doesn't work! See?" Urahara pushed the pages into Mayuri's arm, who promptly snatched it away and frowned even harder than normal.

Akon watched as the paper was flipped over to reveal several equations written in that blue ink he had seen before.

So that was what Mayuri had been doing for all of that time…

Akon's eyes widened.

All of that time…all of that time. To be worthy of all of that time—not just any time, but Mayuri's time. The feeling burned in him, his chest and cheeks prickled beneath the skin. How dare he!

He had always seen the jovial officer in the mess hall. The man was never without a smile, but could deflect the fist of any man who dared to point it at him. There was no way that one could have that grace, have that countenance, and still have more to give. This was why Akon had never given him much thought, even when he tried to bring in gifts. Didn't he know that these gifts only served to remind him of the world outside, the world he was ripped from, an alien world that could never contain anything of his magnitude?

Akon clenched his fists. It was not the 2nd squad underlings, who assisted in the cleanings and whispered the cruel jokes. It wasn't those visitors from the families of the incarcerated, who seemed to gawk at the wasted souls more than they seemed to socialize. This man was the cruelest one of them all!

He couldn't believe it. This demon was standing in _his_ room, with his bag of books flung haphazardly in the corner that contained _his_ futon, stealing _his_ peace, reaching into the mind that _he_ had found so curious. His eyes stung and he bit his bottom lip to keep focused. Why? Just why?

"Oh. Who do we have here?" Urahara leapt to his feet. "It looks like you have a visitor."

Mayuri regarded him with the same sterile gaze that he had always given him. "He just showed up one night, and I've seen him here ever since."

"Poor child." A gentle finger smeared something wet across a cheek. Tears! When had those gotten there?

Akon felt a hand in his hair, and then the same hand pulled him closer, so that his face was now smooshed against the man's torso. He could hear the heartbeat further up in the cavity. It was low-thumping and strong, spaced far apart, the pacing only found in those at an athletic prime. He tried to push away, but the hand pulled him in harder. Urahara got to his knees and took the boy's face between hands, the rough calluses of a swordsman's palm scraping against his cheeks. He looked up into the warm grey-green eyes that smiled back at him.

"Are you afraid of the dark?" Urahara asked. Akon shrugged and tried to pull back. He was seething. Urahara finally let go, but he didn't stand back up. He remained disturbingly at eye-level.

"To be honest, I never cared much for this place at night either. Back when I was a night guard, I used to stay back here too, until Mayuri-san was assigned this cell. He's not too fond of sharing, I'm afraid." He laughed nervously.

Finally the man stood back up. "Akon, is it?" Urahara smiled and turned to face Mayuri. "I'm pleased to see you're making friends."

"Ne, Mayuri-san. This one is cute, and smart too. I knew you'd meet eventually. I'm sure you have much to talk about!" The massive hand was back on Akon's shoulder. This man had no concept of personal space! Again, he tried to brush it off…but the man's fingerprints seemed to be made from Velcro.

"He got thrown in here for many of the same things that you were. They just caught him earlier. It's a shame really. He has a lot of potential." Urahara yawned. Akon could feel the power of Mayuri's gaze boring into him as Urahara continued.

_The same things as Mayuri?_ Was this true?

Mayuri cocked his head to the side. "Oh really?"

Urahara pat Akon twice on the left center of his back. It made hollow sound and resonated even louder in the room. "Poor thing seems to have a bit of trouble getting adjusted to it here. I bring him gigai supplies every once and a while, but he doesn't take them."

That strange light returned to Mayuri's eyes. "You are skilled at gigai construction?" Akon's heart swelled as it absorbed the deep interest that radiated towards him.

Then all too quickly, Mayuri's face when calm. "Then why didn't you say something? If you are of any worth, the only logical thing is to make use of yourself." His thin lips tightened. "I have no time for games," he hissed.

"And yet you play them unendingly." Urahara mused.

Mayuri flinched visibly.

Urahara laughed and turned back to Akon. "Don't worry about this guy. He'll amuse you for hours if you keep pressing the right buttons. There is no need to be—"

"Urahara Kisuke!" The voice was almost on the edge of shouting, but Mayuri had reined it in at the last moment. "Don't you have to feed your cat or something?" He sneered.

The sharp, knowing look disappeared from Urahara's face, melting into something that resembled what happened when you put cotton candy, unicorns and starshine into a blender. "Ah, I guess it is getting late, isn't it." He bowed politely as he met the threshold. "I'll see you later Mayuri-san. I'll let you know how the tests run."

"Yes. And you better write the results and discussion while sober this time…"

Urahara sighed. "I really wish you'd have more fun! All work and no play, makes Mayu-chan a dull boy."

"Do not call me that _ever_ again."

"It will never happen again, Mayu-chan!" Akon stood agape as the man smacked the wall with the flat of his hand, causing the bars to reform themselves, separating him from Mayuri. Was this man absolutely mad?

"You too, Akon-kun." He smiled sweetly. "Take care of each other while I'm gone, ok? I'll bring you something nice to play with, tomorrow. Be sure to share it with him. No sense in stopping your education, is there?"

Urahara grabbed his bag, gave a final wave, and the clattering of the sandals trailed off into nothing.

Mayuri's rigid posture went slack, and he let out an audible sigh. The silence passed like a brick being scraped against concrete.

"I despise that man," he said after a while.

"Why?" The question escaped too fast. After all, he had seemed so interested in what Urahara had worked with him on. All the nights of endless writing…if not for a genuine wish to collaborate, why?

"Why?" Mayuri stared past him, in an almost dreamy way. "Hmmm…why indeed." He rested his chin over his folded hands. "He's hiding something. Or he wants something. Perhaps he just intends to gain my trust and then turn on me like an ill-bred cur. Perhaps he has sicker hobbies."

His hand pounded on the desk beside him along with each syllable as he began to speak. "_I just can't figure him out_!"

Mayuri sighed. He got the docket of papers back out and laid them in an array on the desk.

"Come here, child," he said.

Akon jumped.

"Don't just stand there. I'm not going to do anything to you. I'm not like those barbarians out there."

Akon came up to the bars, wrapping his little hands around them.

"How many times must I say it? You're small enough. Just squeeze through sideways. If you can't even figure out simple spatial relations, I fail to see how you could have any potential at all."

"Come show me what you know." Mayuri's eyes were hungry. "It's been a while since I've met anyone useful. I hope you're not a complete waste."

Akon nodded. Now was his chance. He shimmied through the bars and took the pencil that Mayuri held out.

He stared at the sea of diagrams. The models flowed one into the other, overlapping, the strengths and constraints on each node corresponding to a different major nerve plexus. He had never seen any schematics quite like this before, but then again, nothing could stray too far from the basic design. He jotted down the calculations of the potentials, immersing himself in the harmonic poetry of mathematics. After all, everything on Earth was a system, governed by rules that could be manipulated, exploited or cracked by the sheer force of mind.

Lost in his work, Akon was no longer in the Maggot's Nest. His destination was far, far, greater and even though he had been away too long, his kingdom of cogitation awaited him with open arms. He didn't notice the smile that flickered across Mayuri's lips. He was oblivious to the even more ravenous gaze that grew wild and still more feral over his shoulder, lusting after the formulae that flicked from the pencil point. He didn't even feel the steady pulse of Mayuri's breathing, which came harder and harder on the back of his neck, as the efflux of adrenaline frayed the man's over-practiced calm demeanor.

His soundproof focus was only broken towards the very end, by a low-pitched breathy utterance.

"Oh…well then. I see."

Mayuri took the pencil from Akon's slackened hand and finished the side of the box that had been left open in mid sketch. Akon flushed with embarrassment, but to his surprise, Mayuri wasn't scowling at him. Instead, he was rapt with frightening concentration, his fingers trembling so much that the last line drawn on the paper appeared to be electrified.

"How very, very interesting!"

The words of praise hazed Akon's mind, like warm honey being poured down the back of his neck. These words he would strive for, as long as he had left to live.

xXx

There had been 13 moons now, a blue moon, in the year since they had met. This time, it hung large in the sky, red-orange like it was painted in blood. The voices whirled around him in a maelstrom of dissonance. Akon slunk against the walls, carefully avoiding people. He was a shadow. He was the dark. He broke into a run at the threshold of the hallway. Just a bit farther. A bit farther.

The cell yawned open. The blood rushing through Akon's ears quickened. The manacle lay open on the ground and even though the bedding was unmade, it was merely turned open rather than balled up. A white Maggot's nest uniform rested neatly folded and put on the ground.

The hands gripped Akon's throat tighter. He swam in the sea of darkness, swirling, down, down. The stabbing pains ripped through his ribs, piercing his heart, his lungs, his gut. He grasped his upper arms but he could no longer feel his own fingers, they now belonged to a stranger.

Akon dove under the sheet, wrapping himself in the mediocre quality cotton. He cocooned in it until he could only see out a tiny window between folds. Somehow he felt instantly warmer. His heart rate slowed. The tingling in his extremities quieted. The grip on his throat released.

He was cloaked in the scent of him. Akon stared out into the dark. Strangely it was no longer around him. Instead it writhed at the outside of the open bars. He wrapped himself tighter and tighter until his mind went black as he slept.

In the morning Akon groggily opened his eyes. Light filtered down the hallway. The bones in his spine cracked as he moved them; he had fallen asleep against the wall. He slid down the stone blocks into…bump.

"Good morning, sleeping beauty."

Akon's eyes flew wide open. "Sorry," he stammered.

Urahara Kisuke was sitting right next to him. "No problem." He patted the boy's head.

"I'm sure you are fairly confused. To tell you the truth, I don't work here anymore. It may be problematic if I came back here a second time," he continued.

Kisuke unfolded his hands before folding them yet again. Akon knew it wasn't nervous energy, though to a less perceptive eye, it would appear that the man was trying to crawl out of his own skin.

"I have come to take you from this place in return for your services in my laboratory."

Was this legal? Akon had his doubts, but this man could stand on par with Mayuri; this man was magic.

"If you don't wish to go, I understand. I can sometimes be hard to get along with." Kisuke laughed. "But if you'd come, I'd be glad to have you."

Akon nodded.

"All right then," said Kisuke. "Follow me and you can meet everyone who's coming along."

Everyone? He planned to take out more?

He followed Kisuke to the top of the stairs where a varied group of people milled between two confused guards.

The blond man bent over to his level. "I'm glad you decided to come with us," he whispered behind a hand. "I think there's somebody already doing work in my lab who'd never admit how sad he'd be to never see your face again."

Akon grinned.

He followed behind the motley crew: a woman with chains in her hair, a man with a face like a panda, a walking skeleton, and a huge heaping hulk.

For the first time in a year, he felt the sun.

* * *

><p>Reviews are instrumental in helping me improve my writing. Drop me a line!<p> 


	2. Day Into Night

Hello again! Sorry for the delay in my posting. I meant to get it out before my spring break ended, but I ended up getting very busy. This chapter ended up growing and growing on me!

This one is a bit darker in tone, but such is growing up. In the 12th squad as in real life, the haze of youth doesn't last forever.

* * *

><p>"Hold Still!"<p>

Akon rolled his eyes. He had scratched an itch, and if he hadn't done so, he would have probably jerked in an odd way throwing Hiyori off even more.

"Sorry."

"Doesn't matter now. I've already pricked myself on the goddamn pin."

"Sorry."

The blonde growled. "I don't understand why the hell it's my job to make sure that everybody gets their fuckin' uniforms. Everybody here's got two perfectly good hands, and they might as well put them to good use instead of standin' there with their thumbs up their asses."

"I have better things to do than to sew, you flat-chested shrew," Mayuri huffed. "Now if you would just do your job, we could both get back to what we wanted to be doing in the first place.

"I-I'd stab you with a pin right in the ass, except you'd actually like that, you fuckin' pervert." She sighed, pinning another layer of fabric. "There. Now get outta that. I can't get done with this when you're still wearin' the damn thing."

"Good. I was beginning to get a headache from being next to such a racket."

"Fuck you." She punched him in the back.

"As if I would ever give you the satisfaction," answered Mayuri.

Hiyori made a series of contorsions and convulsions. "Ugh, no! Grrr! I hate you, I hate this place!" She shook one last time, Mayuri smiling bemusedly at her. "Why the hell do we have to wear these ugly things anyhow? It's like you've shown up to work wearin' a tent."

Akon had to agree with her—the labcoats did kind of give the wearer a blimp-like shape. But, Urahara had insisted that the fabric was fireproof, acid proof, waterproof, as well as bulletproof, and that the design gave the most accurate configuration to maximize all of these qualities.

"C'mon kid. You too. Give it here."

Akon slipped out of the fabric only narrowly before she had ripped it off herself. He watched Mayuri slide out of his and lay it over top of Akon's coat, as it was very obvious that Hiyori did not want to touch him any more than she had to. The door to the lab opened with a kick and the very top of Urahara's head could be seen over the box of lab equipment. Collections of glassware, a variety of instruments, and several gages of tubing stuck out from the box helter-skelter. The door slammed behind him with the same force it had been kicked open with.

Urahara peeked around the box. "Ah Hiyori-san! You've done such a nice job with everything!"

She glared at him.

"Suck it."

Tucking the cloth under her arm, she stormed off to measure other members of the lab…in the room furthest from Urahara.

"She's always so funny." Beamed Urahara. "I've always admired a woman with a little bit of fight in her."

Akon didn't really understand either of them. Hiyori spent most of her time with the fifth squad captain and constantly bitched about Urahara, about the lab, about Mayuri. Urahara on the other hand took her abuse, all of it. He could see the faint bruises from where he had let her land a punch on the side of his face. He had seen Urahara take down the most brutish of men with his bare hands in the Maggot's Nest; as fiery as she was, he doubted that any of the hits were real.

"Why would he do that," he muttered.

"Because he's fighting a war of attrition."

He hadn't noticed the teenage girl walk in behind him carrying a stack of technical manuals. She set it down on the table and tugged on one of her chained pigtails.

"Megane-san."

Of the group of general workers that Urahara took with Akon, she was by far the most normal. Save for a tendency to daydream, stopping midsentence while you talked to her, and her room filled with questionable pin-up calendars named things like "The Girls of Soul Society—Swimsuit Edition" or "Shinigami Gone Wild!—Unseated Ladies of the 8th Squad", she wasn't that different from the average shinigami woman. She didn't seem anything like him or like Mayuri. Hiyosu was and looked like a freak, just like most of the others, but she was different. It only made Akon wonder harder, as he'd never dare ask her that burning question.

Nobody ever talked about why they had been in the Maggot's Nest—they only looked forward, though their dangerous natures were still intact.

"He's just wearing her down. One day she'll never understand why she doubted him in the first place." Megane-san put a hand on her hip. "He was like that in the nest, too you know."

Akon nodded. He did know. He had seen it every time that Urahara had sat in front of him with a bunch of raw materials and a split open body with a complex design but a simple, glaring error.

"_Ne, Akon-san! I've had a lot of trouble trying to build this. Would you mind checking it for me?"_ he'd say.

Akon had always found it patronizing, but now that he sat back and thought about it, maybe it was the only way that Urahara knew how to try. Maybe he had been trying hard to make him ready for Mayuri, too, but like Hiyori, he was too dense to see his vision.

Mayuri brushed past Akon and browsed through the stack of tech manuals. He pulled out a few before carrying them over to a bookshelf near his work space. Akon clutched at his qualitative methods book walking over to his bench. He was so short that he could barely reach over the counter, but today when he had come into the lab, he had found a small wooden platform for him to stand on placed in front of his place.

_Urahara._

He looked over to see the captain with his favorite partner, watching them bicker now in the corner. It was a sight to behold, Urahara's golden aura pressing back against Mayuri's black. Urahara stepped forward; Mayuri stepped backwards. It was an angry dance, as Mayuri followed, rather than led. Eventually he had been swirled around and around, and was backed against a wall. Even so, Akon could see the truth that Mayuri tried so hard to conceal.

Mayuri didn't talk to people he truly despised. There was deep respect there beneath the veneer of bitterness, of curiosity beneath the disdain.

Akon wondered how Urahara had won over Mayuri that first time. Was it his forcefulness; did he wear Mayuri out, grinding him down, too?

Regardless he knew better than to ask.

xXx

Akon had awoke to the sounds of shattered rock, explosions and the crackling of fire. He sat up in his bed, his eyes piercing the dark.

Electricity juiced his nerves. The feeling drained from his fingertips and they tingled like a thousand needles had been shoved through the pad. The familiar but foreign feeling made his heart race. Shakily, he shoved his feet into his shoes, threw on a lab coat, and made for the door. At the end of main hallway down the 12th division barracks, he could see the sparking power cord as it waved. Akon broke into a run, pulling the cloth of his coat over his nose when he entered the smoky room.

He gasped as he entered and stopped, frozen in place with disbelief.

The laboratory was in shambles. Akon winced as the glass crunched under his feet. The bookshelves were thrown over, their contents scattered all over the floor. Various organic materials lay splattered; their cases cracked open. It was as if someone was looking for something, and had torn up the room like a wild beast. He could feel his mind slipping away, the cold water-like sensation rising up to suffocate him.

Everything was gone.

_Slow down. Slow down._

The breaths came easier now, but the tightness still squeezed at his neck. His hands still tingled with the feeling of pins and needles, but it was less. All he needed was less in this maelstrom of too much.

"Who's there?"

Akon hadn't noticed the man who had been in the far end of the lab. The shadow stretched lean and catlike, lying on the ground, waiting in the shade.

"Assistant Director."

Akon looked closer. The dripping sound that he had heard earlier wasn't water at all. The _drip drip drip_ of blood from Mayuri's hand hit the concrete floor—one of the few parts of the laboratory that had been spared. The man was grinning, his yellow eyes reflecting in the shadow.

"Are you all right?"

Mayuri laughed, a deep and hearty laugh. It echoed against the remaining walls and crescendoed.

"All right?" He said. " All right! I couldn't be better now could I?"

He licked his palm, pondered the taste and took a deep breath.

Akon wiped his mouth on his sleeve. He padded over to Mayuri, past the broken machine that was belching smoke, around the lake of spilled chemicals. He stood next to Mayuri, who sat up.

Mayuri looked past him, rather than at him. "Waste," he said. "A complete waste."

Akon nodded. "What happened?" He asked.

"A group of inspectors from the central 46 came in and took half of our research. They destroyed this place! " Murderous intent flashed in his eyes. "I came in to work just as they were leaving this mess."

It was odd. Something wasn't right.

He was the only one with Mayuri. There should have at least been Hiyori left to shout orders and control the damage. Or perhaps it would be Urahara's calm demeanor trying to soothe anybody who entered the broken laboratory. But now, there was no one there. Instead, the air rang out with silence and the soft rumbling, crackling, scraping sounds of decay and destruction.

"He isn't here" said Akon.

He surveyed the scattered notebooks, the smashed specimen glasses. He felt the air with his reiatsu, searching for familiar forces. Suddenly, he knew.

"He's not coming back." Akon swallowed, looking at his feet.

"What did you say?" The metallic voice cut through the air.

Akon tried to take a step backwards but Mayuri lunged at him.

"Why on earth would I _care_ if he was coming back!" Mayuri grabbed Akon's collar roughly and wrenched the small body down into his face. "Why _should_ I care!"

The blood from his hand soaked into Akon's lab coat. Blossoming a deeper and richer crimson, the stain grew the harder Mayuri pulled and shook. "It's his fault. Why else wouldn't he be here!"

Suddenly the bloodlust in the face was gone. Akon's heart still hammered in his chest; he knew Mayuri was capable of great violence, but it was the first time it had ever been turned against him. A mode of temperance had just been removed; he had been lucky.

Mayuri released him, almost gently, and he pumped his fingers as if he was just now noticing the lack of blood to fill them. Akon ripped the bottom hem of his coat and started binding the wound tight, crunching together the fine bones that outlined Mayuri's palm. He reached out to use kidou to heal it further, but Mayuri shook his head.

"I'll do it later." He said. "Now, it feels nice."

Akon watched the dreamlike haze film across Mayuri's eyes. Mayuri plunged the tips of his fingers into the cut, pressing harder, harder. His breathing grew less haggard and more steady. Now blood soaked through the bandage, too. But still, the man did nothing but sit there with his head cocked.

Mayuri's face was blank. Akon couldn't imagine the thoughts that flitted through the face in front of him. But he could tell that they were fast moving. The eyes burned brighter, the ideas moving more and more swiftly and circular and circular, winding and projecting forward like the stream from a broken movie projector. There were skips. There were jumps. But the film was in full color, beautiful and intact.

Again, Mayuri flopped down onto his back. Akon squatted into the space beside him—the one not covered in glass shards. He reached over the man's body and scooted the glittering points further away from his torso.

He jumped as Mayuri set a hand on his knee.

He examined his hand. "The bleeding stopped."

Akon fell back from his haunches. He settled into the hollow beneath Mayuri's ribs. He half expected Mayuri to draw away…but he didn't. He didn't' even acknowledge that they were touching at all, he just stared emptily up to the bright blue sky in the lone high lab window—the only sign there was as to whether it was night or day. It was odd, this juxtaposition of a beautiful day and sheer destruction.

Now that he thought about it…this was the closest they had ever been to one another. All except for that one night, when Mayuri had stared over his shoulder as he worked. The night that he cherished.

"It's supposed to be a full moon tonight…" Mayuri trailed off.

Akon nodded. He knew. He always knew.

A butterfly flew into the lab, landing at Mayuri's ear. His eyes flashed at the news, then went into an unreadable mask.

"Treason," said Mayuri. "He's been exiled." He laughed. "Whatever that means. He was nothing but a fool."

"You couldn't trust him."Mayuri said, not moving his gaze from the sky. "I could never figure out what he wanted. It only figures that he would be thrown out in due course."

Akon said nothing. He understood enough to know that he didn't understand. Like Mayuri, he was a creature of logic. So if it was a situation that would unhinge Mayuri's logic, so too would it unhinge his.

Mayuri began to speak again. "Funny how people like us remain, isn't it? Not that we're any less dangerous."

Akon remained silent. There was really nothing to say.

"Treason." Mayuri sighed. "The bastard actually had an interesting project, brought me out of that hole, and didn't even have the nicety to share in what he was doing."

Akon didn't want to think about the rebuilding that would have to be done, the endless stores of data that would be reconstructed. It would be easy to have people from other divisions to help out in rebuilding the walls, installing the tables, and the shelves…but the true inner contents. The vacancy of a captain…and a vice captain…

"You're right." Akon said.

"Of course I am." The superior note to his voice sent a shiver down Akon's spine. With those words, it was the end of an era.

Akon looked out at the cloudless sky one last time, so ironic, like the gods had a sense of humor. He closed his eyes and lay back on the ground, close to Mayuri, but still the centimeter separating their bodies felt like a mile.

Finally the clouds began to roll in, and with them the promise of a storm. Akon's strange sense of unease began to quell. Now if only the clouds could bring the night.

xXx

"Move over! You're blocking the entire window!"

Hiyosu grumbled. "But then I can't see!" He stepped back anyway.

"You've got that damn eye crank that you put in last week," spat Akon. "Use it."

"But it's sore…"

Akon elbowed his way in, standing tiptoe, resting his chin on the high pane. The window was small, but still they could see the circle of people who stood around a lone man.

The voices in the crowd were faint; Akon strained to hear them, wishing for the wind to blow in just the right way.

"Your zanpakuto is of the poison type," said a voice. "The provided antidote has been taken by all members of this committee."

"Should this fail to be the correct concoction, a team of officers has been positioned to neutralize you. I'm sure you understand the precaution."

Heat rose to Akon's face. It understandable from a rational standpoint; there was talk about sending them all back when Urahara was exiled. But even still, rationalizing and feeling the verbal punch in the gut were two matters in themselves that Akon could never unify. As much as this was about Mayuri, hell everything was about Mayuri, there would be some small victory for him too. White-knuckled, he simmered, an infusion of hope, spite, and vengeance.

Mayuri grinned, his knowing, superior smile that hid all of his thoughts. He said something; Akon could see the black-painted lips moving, but he couldn't hear nor see well enough to make out any shapes. Suddenly the crowd backed away from the gaunt looking man, forming a line along the far wall, whispering amongst themselves

"Hiyosu." Akon elbowed him. "You can read their lips. Tell us what he said."

"Stand back."

He had seen Mayuri's shikai only a handful of times, but Akon had marveled at how well it suited its owner. The damage was stealthy and deadly; it still had an element of surprise even though the jagged tines of the trident and the purple clouds of smoke that belched forth from the gilded child's mouth were ostentatious and gaudy. The thrust of a point like a pin through a butterfly, transfixed, a specimen…

Akon could read these words. They were spoken slowly, deliberately.

_Ban Kai._

The area around the hilt began to smoke a darker, blacker shade of violet as soon as the man had tilted his wrist at an awkward angle. Screaming filled the air along with a gastly fanfare for the growing creature, a mix of the groaning of splitting earth and an unearthly chorus of horns.

_Konjiki Ashisogi Jizou!_

The peanut gallery around him gasped. But for Akon, it wasn't much of a surprise. Sure, the sheer size of it was impressive, but it too fit the weilder.

The golden infant's head spewed out more poison and a multitude of blades spiked forward from the chest. Mayuri waved his blade, motioning down the wide hall. A hundred large-but-tiny legs surged into motion, and the creature dove headfirst into an empty building, which crashed to the ground.

The officers who had stood on the sidelines now stepped closer, smiling and clapping. The creature pulled its head out of the building and waited patiently behind Mayuri while he bowed to his strangely adoring crowd, who at just a few moments before had been ready to condemn them.

Akon smiled. Mayuri was now their equal. Even if they disliked him, or even still felt some distrust, he had entered the ranks graced by the few and powerful. He was worth keeping, worth negotiating with to have the aid of his power and intellect. The stakes were too high now to simply throw him away. Urahara may have originally given him freedom; but now he alone had preserved it, and with it, the fate of everyone from the Maggon's Nest who worked in the department. This was a double edged truth—just as Urahara had once been their protector, now Mayuri _owned_ them.

Akon was the first to say something once the captain entered the door to the lab.

"Congratulations." He kept his eyes down, intently staring at the work in his hands.

Mayuri walked over to him, slowly, deliberately. "It was easy. I've been able to manifest my zanpakuto spirit before they ever locked me up." He folded his arms across his chest.

Mayuri made his rounds of the room, hunting silently, like a snake through the grass. Akon felt the breath on the back of his neck.

"Were you watching, Akon?"

Akon paused. He couldn't lie. "Yes."

Mayuri raised his arms in exasperation. "No wonder there wasn't any work on any of the projects while I was gone. Pitiful."

He continued. "You _will_ be in here for an extra two hours tonight. I expect progress, Akon. Progress. It's not that difficult."

He stepped back and looked at the other members who were in the laboratory. "That goes for you as well. Two extra hours of work for everyone reports are due in the morning. I have a new drug I would like to test, and those of you who do not make sufficient progress can and will be used in the phase one trials!"

Even amongst the moans, Akon couldn't be angry.

After all, he wouldn't have missed it for the world.

xXx

Akon tugged on his sleeves. He could have sworn that the labcoat fit yesterday. He knew it did. But today the fabric stretched perilously tight across his shoulders, clipping the radius of his reach. Sighing, he stood at his bench, eyeing the jars of reagents that sat, neatly packed against each other.

_Hmmm…_

He squinted at the labels, wandering until he read the formula _H__3__PO__4._ He reached forward for it, but the stitching on the shoulder gave. _Rrrip!_

"Akon-san!"

Megane had turned from her bench at the sound.

_Tch._ Where was he going to get another jacket?

She examined the shoulder. "Aw man…I can't fix it this time. You're too big now." She flipped up the wrists of his sleeves and sighed. "There's nothing left in the hem."

"I suppose I'm going to need longer gloves," said Akon, dryly. "No, I'm fine. I can whipstitch the shoulder and go back to work."

She cuffed him. "We have standards uphold here and the director would be pissed if he found out that the sterile technique protocol of his experiments had been confounded."

Akon stared her right in the eyes, glaring flatly. He couldn't remember matching, let alone being above her gaze before. When had he gotten this tall?

He waved her away. "I know, I know. Where do we have a new one?"

Megane frowned. "None in your size. It's not like I'd be able to alter one of—" she looked around. Her voice got softer. "It's not like I could alter one of _Urahara_-san's old coats."

Akon nodded.

"I think Rin's in the back room. Go see if there's something. We at least need to get you some longer sleeves."

The storeroom was dark and dry. Akon examined the jars of specimens surrounding him. He remembered preserving some of them—the creatures sliced open, insides splayed and then preserved forever in aldehydes or plastinated with little labels pointing out the parts. A matter of old equipment and broken machines lay stacked up against the wall, springs, cogs and wires jutting out where they lay. It was a place that could inspire nightmares for anyone, save the most desensitized.

"I can't even find the main fabric!" Junk flew past Akon as Rin dug through a shelf. Rin stopped, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. "Oh wait!"

He came back with a mess of older coats, some stained at the cuffs, others slightly eggshell rather than white. "Maybe one of these will do until we can sew you a new one."

He pulled out a very tall one and a very short one; Urahara and Hiyori. Akon shifted uncomfortably. He pulled out another that was wide enough to fit four of his widths, most certainly an old coat of Hiyosu.

"Oh, try one of mine."

Akon slipped his arms into the sleeves but they got hung up halfway through, his arms like stuffed sausages.

"I was afraid of that." Rin blew a bubble with his gum which popped and plastered itself against his face. He sucked it back into his mouth with a big slurping sound.

"Huh, I'm not sure who this one belongs to." He squinted at the tags. "It doesn't even look like it was made by us. Someone's before they came to the lab or something."

It was somehow still pristine white, it was just the edges that were a little bit frayed. Rin shook out the shoulders. An ID card fell out of the pocket and clattered onto the floor. A school ID. Rin picked it up and dropped it almost immediately.

"Oh, wow." Rin scratched his head. "I'm not sure if you want to wear this one or not. I'm not sure what would happen if…"

"Let me try it on," Akon said.

He pulled it over himself. His arms glided through the sleeves and the yoke of the shoulders fit him like a glove. He buttoned it up, smoothing it across his chest. The arms were slightly too long, but he rolled them up.

Megane had wandered back into the room. She stared at him. "Gosh, Akon. You look…" She caught her breath again. "You look good."

"For a guy," she added. "If I was into that sort of thing. Would you like a mirror?"

She pulled him in front of a glass panel leaned up against the wall. Akon gazed at his reflection. It was strange, seeing himself in something that fit, if just a bit long. As a small child, everything had been made to grow, and seemed to be either far too big then all of the sudden tiny and confining. The chest laid over the muscles that were starting to fill out his still somewhat spindly frame.

It was a man's coat.

Akon picked up the ID. It gave admittance into the laboratories at the academy in a year far away. A strange face stared back at him; the hair in a blue Mohawk, the face blanched fully white. He slipped it back into the pocket.

"I'll wear this one until we can make me a new one."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. I'll take my chances."

xXx

Akon heard the footsteps coming toward him, but he knew better than to look up. Looking up meant that you weren't working, that something was more engaging than science, more beautiful than knowing the truth.

When the footsteps stopped, he knew it could be a trick, so he immersed himself more deeply in the test tube that he rolled between two fingers, the black and white lingering at the side of his vision. He returned the tube to the rack and began to note his actions in a well-stained lab notebook.

The stack of designs hit Akon on crown of the head and slid down his face, page by page.

"What the hell is this?" Akon rubbed his head.

"Don't ask me, read it."

Mayuri regarded him with probing eyes, the look that vivisected every living thing it came into contact with. For a few brief seconds, Akon stared back. The hair on the back of his neck tingled, his senses felt sharpened. It was strange, this being afraid while not being afraid at all. The thrill of licking the blade of a knife…

Akon dropped his head as he resorted the papers that had scattered across the bench. They contained the designs for a body. Curiously, the skeletal design was female, but the genetic material was not.

The structure of the bone marrow was crosswired so that it formed an internal support structure that was as strong as steel but as light as if the bones belonged to a bird. She also had a cyborg-like quality, in the eerie scanners that were fused into her eyeballs, the gilded reinforcements that kept her muscles and tendons tight to the bone. This…all with the smoothest curves he could have ever drawn.

"I'm building her." Mayuri crossed his arms. He began to tap a foot impatiently.

"Why you showing me this?" Akon grunted.

"Because you're going to help run the lifesupport until I've got the gikon into the gigai."

"Isn't Hiyosu better at this?"

"Just do what you're told," he snapped. "Hiyosu's out on fieldwork until next Tuesday. I want to be done within the week."

Mayuri spun on a heel, heading back towards one of the operating rooms. Akon hurriedly scooped up the papers, tucking them under an arm. He scurried after pale figure who was already halfway down the hall. Mayuri reached the door.

"Well, what are you waiting for? Get in there."

Akon grinned as he sprinted through the open doorway. He pinned the schematics on the board on the wall, the sketches flicking from one side of the room to the other. In the center of the room was a gurney. The fluorescent lamp hung above it, and it blinked slightly. He examined the gutted body, picking up a skinless arm, the wrist flopping with gravity. He slid his hand into the open chest cavity and felt around the heart, the liver…

"Are you done mucking about in my work?

Akon pulled his arm out sheepishly. "Sorry. What next?"

"The lifesupport machines are over there. I need you to monitor them and to do exactly what I tell you, exactly when I tell you to. It's a job I know you can't screw up."

Akon blushed. A compliment. He was warm, floating almost.

"Yes, Director."

Akon plugged the little electrodes into the flesh of the gigai; a series of needles went to the heart, the lungs, the brain. The parts inside the box whirred and the display blinked. 'Stage One' it read.

The chest began to rise and fall. It was an eerie sight, Akon had to admit. Like a half dissected corpse, still alive. The moisture on it glistened.

"I am going to put in the soul." Mayuri produced a weird spider-like object. "Heal it with your kidou instantaneously while I force in the tendrils."

"Tendrils?"

"We don't want her falling out of the gigai do we?"

Akon nodded. This was definitely something new.

"Now!"

The green heat surged from Akon's hands, streaming from his fingertips to the body below. Mayuri dug through the organs, placing the mod soul behind her heart. The legs of the spider began to cut into the body as Mayuri thrust his power into them, growing as he infused it with his power. Sweat rolled down Akon's face. He wasn't accustomed to giving kidou backup for this long; his shoulders ached and his back stiffened.

"There," said Mayuri. He nodded.

Akon turned up the knob on the machine. Stage two.

The two scientists began to fit skin to the body, stretching it over the bones, anchoring it with a fascia forming foam. Akon still couldn't believe the feel under his fingertips. So soft, the curve of her hip plush under his hands, but so strong. Not the slightest bit of luxation in the joints as he worked the knee and hip, spreading the skin further up her thigh. The muscles of her leg were hard and full, even in this relaxed state.

Akon again gave his attention to the machine.

"Now, Akon."

He hesitated. "But you're not done."

"I said, now."

Akon took a deep breath and turned it up a notch. Now all he could do was watch. He began to type on the tiny keyboard that was attached, adding a little more, a little more until…

The scream.

Mayuri's face lit up wild. He laughed as the body beneath him howled in pain.

"Yes! Pain is good! Pain is proof that you are alive!"

Suddenly Mayuri jumped upon the gurney, kneeling, straddling her waist. He drove a bladed instrument deep into her neck. The tears flowed down her face until finally there was nothing.

She had closed her eyes. He slapped her across the face. She didn't wake.

"Hmmm," said Mayuri. "Did I lose too much of the pain response? No…we'll need that for battle."

He looked down at her, both madly and greedily. He adjusted something again with the bizarre instrument in his hand.

"It's like she is sleeping," said Akon. There she was, dreaming through the storm.

"Nemu." Mayuris voice was solid.

"What?

"Her name. What did you think it was!" He spat. "Nemu…the sleeper…"

Akon cranked the machine to the final setting. He moved to the head of her bed, staring at the features that had been only a chunk of meat a mere few hours ago. The halfway parted lips, the lush eyelashes that brushed her cheek. He reached out to touch her.

Nemu opened her eyes. Akon jerked his hand back. They were so empty, lifeless pools of green that sucked him in as if to drown his hopes. If he looked hard enough, he could see the retinal implants that had not yet completely healed.

"Yes," hissed Mayuri. "My creation. My brainchild. My daughter."

She struggled to sit up; Mayuri supported her shoulders until she was upright. She coughed and coughed and gasped for air. She hacked up blood first, then liquids Akon didn't care to name. He just dabbed at her face with a towel, until her breathing evened and settled.

"You're dismissed." The once jubilant timbre was now cold, jagged.

"What?"

"I said you're dismissed. I don't have a need for you."

The electrodes deep in her body were pulled out one by one, but her face remained fixed, without even a twinge of discomfort even as pinpricks of blood welled up. She turned her head and stared at, no, beyond Akon, spacing out at the wall. Mayuri ran his hands down her body, checking the alignment of her bones, her muscles, her form. It would look creepy, even lecherous if it were anyone else's hands, but there were few tasks Mayuri could do that wasn't neutered by his clinical veneer even as his fingertips trailed over a breast. He clasped the sides of her face between his thin palms, forcing her to face him, his gaze boring into hers, inches away from her face.

Akon stepped backwards. He closed his eyes and saw the green voids that Mayuri stared into now. He stepped back again, again, and his back hit the door. As much as he tried to shake it, now he felt empty too.

xXx

Mayuri looked at him as if he had grown extra limbs and changed color. "Well, how _did_ you expect her to get a zanpakuto?"

The idea of it sent a shockwave through Akon's mind. He had always known that two people could be visited by the same zanpakuto, and that if they did, they would have to fight to the death for the privilege of wielding their weapon. But still, as far as he was aware, it hadn't happened in hundreds of years. And now his captain wanted to induce it artificially for the sake of Nemu…

"Director, are you sure this is legal?"

"What can they do about it? There are strict laws in place as to what one must do in this situation. Perhaps they are a bit uncivilized—but they'll do."

Like a mirror to Mayuri, Akon's mouth curled into a wolfish smile. "Will it work?"

"Of course it will work." Mayuri straightened himself up. "Search parameters…"

Mayuri looked at the roster on the computer screen, playing his inaudible concerto of research. "Family tree must be taken into consideration…no lines that have produced a bankai user. However, a vice captain level is acceptable."

The clicking of his nails on the keyboards grew more frantic. "Also, a low level name but not a student taken from the Rukongai."

He tapped Akon on the shoulder, making him jump. "I want a history, but I want the drama minimized."

A list of names filtered through—fifty of them. Akon stared at the pictures that gazed back at him.

"Any other filters, director?" Akon asked.

"Ah, yes, one more…."

Beside each name a flury of titles, certificates, skills and ranks appeared. "Scientific ability."

"No sense in losing an expert or a diligent fundraiser." He scratched his head. "Anyone on here you just don't care for, Akon? I never saw any reason to trouble myself below seat 20…but you've gotten pretty popular since you joined the men's association."

Akon examined the faces, thirty-three were male, twenty-seven were female. None of them were great scientists…but none were truly bad either—every single one of them was destined for mediocrity and probably a division transfer.

"Should we pick a female to remove any other confounds in the experiment?" He asked.

Mayuri's face brightened. "Good idea. Cuts the list down too."

Akon noticed the picture of a woman with mousy brown hair and a long face. The eyes stared back at him, boring into him. He pointed at her, reporting. This was what death sounded like—his voice.

"This one is weakest in combat. She has the fewest specialties and she only receives a modest amount in grants that she applies to. She is a middle child born into a newly established house…born 3rd in a family with five children."

"Vice captains in lineages?"

"No. But several seated officers."

"Good. What were the release powers?"

"A fire user, an ice user, an illusion master and an unidentifiable type…"

"She'll be a wild card then." Mayuri frowned a little harder. "I suppose that's alright. Zanpakuto qualities are often inherited through families, but not always."

Mayuri hung there, thinking. "Go get her for me, and then you'll help me with the process."

_Help with the process._ Images sprang to Akon's mind. Nemu laying on the operating table, the skin not fully formed over her body. The hands of his captain sliding against her warm skin. The feel of the door against his back. He shook it away. Mayuri needed him for this now as he needed him then. Akon was a tool to be used, just like any other member of the division. He knew what he was and he was happy to serve.

He nodded his head and began his long walk down the hall. He held his breath and then blew it out. He was going to have to figure out what he was going to tell her.

xXx

Akon watched the fight, observing calmly.

The girl collapsed on the ground, her breathing ragged. The sweat trickled down her temples, carving their way through the caked on dirt. Her ankle was broken and it bent off at an unsettling angle. Nemu stepped closer to her, calmly.

"No!" The girl scooted back.

Nemu's eyes were flat, mechanical, seeing and unseeing. She reached forward, grabbing the girl's neck. She clawed at Nemu's grip, scratching and scraping her nails into Nemu's skin, but Nemu didn't recognize any of it at all. She was aware of pain only so much that it prevented her from damaging her body to the point of immobility or bleeding to death. It was just an annoyance.

She gripped tighter and twisted with a jolt, the arms of her victim flopping to the sides as the spine was broken, nerves severed. The terrified expression still stared up at her. With her free arm, Nemu pulled back, letting her hand spin like a drill. She plunged it deep into her opponent's chest again and again.

The blood splattered against Nemu's face. Her expression was unmoving as she let down the lifeless corpse.

Mayuri had slid forward on his seat, hands on the railing. He turned to Akon as the fight officiant moved to pronounce the loser as dead.

"She was a fine choice on your part."

That familiar warmth returned to him. Maybe he was useful to the captain, after all.

xXx

"I'm sorry, Akon."

Megane placed a hand on Akon's shoulder. He shrugged it off and brushed the place where the warmth remained. He hated that, the way that a light touch lingered, tingling, itching his skin. Like sitting down on a seat too soon after another warm body, except here, he couldn't get away from it unless he somehow crawled out of his skin.

"Sorry for what?" said Akon flatly.

Rin shuffled over towards the two of them, carrying a beaker with an unknown liquid sloshing around inside of it. He set it down on the bench next to Megane and clasped his hands together, his fingers wiggling nervously. His constant sugar high was even more squirrely than usual.

"Well, to be honest, we all thought that…" He took a deep breath. "Well, we thought that _you'd_ get it."

"Get what." Akon growled. "I'm not a mind reader."

"_The vice captain's position!"_

Akon flushed.

"It has nothing to do with me." He frowned.

"But you've been helping him all this time."

He shrugged. "Being angry about it won't do anything."

"_Akon."_

They silenced.

He was right, after all. Just like he usually was.

Maybe a little part of him had hoped, too, that he would stand there beside Mayuri in the officers meetings, just like he had done when Mayuri was just beginning his career as an acting captain. Even if it meant being berated more often than one of the lower officers who scurried in and out of the shadows in the newly expanded laboratories. Even now, he did the work that Mayuri would rather not dirty his hands with—the blood that he was learning to ignore that stained all the way up to elbow deep in a body.

No, there was a gulf between them, still. His bones were leaden as he reached up to grab at that man. He was foolish for thinking that he might have been ready. He hadn't grown enough, he wasn't far enough, and now Mayuri had grown tired of waiting.

The embarrassment thrummed in his ears. Years had passed since Mayuri was thrust into leadership; for all of those years Akon had failed to pick up that slack.

The door slammed.

"Why are you all just _standing_ there?" The voice was sharp, even for its normal, frenzied tone.

The circle around Akon shifted uncomfortably, each member of the group performing their own neurotic signature, as if pretending that it was not them that stood there. The scratching of a neck, the twiddling of a lock of hair, the shuffling of feet. One by one they went back to their stations, quickly occupying themselves with their work, or at least looking busy.

"I do not pay you to loiter around. I do not pay you to waste my precious time. Must I babysit you to get you to stay on task?" The fabric of the captain's haori fluttered in his wake, brushing Akon as he walked in beside of him, then passed by.

Mayuri stopped behind him.

Akon could hear his labored breathing; he must have been in the lower floors of the basement and walked all the way up. Akon held his breath, waiting for him to move on, to say something, to do anything but hang in the suspended animation he was swimming through.

"Akon."

Akon turned around to face him, golden eyes holding him captive. He searched Mayuri's face for questions, for answers. All that he saw was that probing, wondering fire that burned behind the gaze that most people regarded with mistrust. It wasn't a staredown, it wasn't a message, it wasn't caring of any sort.

What Mayuri was searching for he couldn't tell. The feeling of stupidity slithered deep into the pit of his stomach. Akon flinched.

Mayuri waved a hand. "Nothing. Get back to work."

Nemu approached, filing behind her master, graceful yet staccato, deerlike. She was ethereally beautiful. That too was something that he was not. He was of the earth, of the empirical world, the place where science stems from. Hypotheses are grounded in observations of the earth, and in turn eventually are disproven using the same worldly observations. What use was that which could not be measured?

From then on, Nemu was always there, everpresent, two steps behind him. Her eyes were deeper, emptier than he had remembered on that operating table. She stepped lightly, her hips rocking in an uber-feminine sway.

The rage inside him burnt so hot that his nerves were now gone and nothing but numbness lived in their place. Still, Akon couldn't hate her. She was a shell, a creation. He had helped to make her, but in the end very little within her was his.

Mayuri stood observing a project of two lower seated officers. His face was fixed in his toothy grin. Akon sighed with relief. That face could easily change, but it was a welcome change from the heavy pressure that had filled the room earlier.

He heard her soft bell-toned voice. "But Mayuri-sama, don't you think that—"

"No, I don't. And if you'd keep your irrelevant thoughts to yourself, maybe you could learn something from me."

The hit echoed across all corners of the laboratory. The impact hurled her into the wall with a yelp. She hung there for a moment before straightening up, as if nothing had ever happened.

"Yes, Mayuri-sama."

Mayuri looked across the research lab, all eyes regarding him and Nemu suddenly busy and turned to their work.

Nemu continued to trail behind her captain, like a neat little pet, never straying more than an arm's length away. At that moment, Akon understood his gift of freedom; 3rd seat was pure power without higher responsibility. It was profound how Mayuri said the most with the words he never said at all. Even if he never meant to say them.

It wasn't until later that Akon saw the letterhead for the SRDI that he learned what Mayuri had really done. There was his name, written in the beautiful caligrapy. Assistant director to the SRDI.

He smiled. Not a word. Still not a word. But in that silence was a world indeed.

* * *

><p>Expect the final installment to be out in the summer. As always, reviews are writer fuel and always nice. It's always good to hear from the readers.<p> 


	3. Michikake

To my readers:

You may want to reread the end of 2. I have made it canon compliant. But anyway, moving along.

It may have taken me 3 years to publish the first word after I warned rezh0 that I had a dark Mayu/Akon idea. It may have taken me 3 more years to work to give Akon the voice he deserves. I have survived illness, hardship, madness and immense growth as a person. I have rebuilt myself from the rubble of nothing.

Through everything this idea has stuck with me—6 freaking years. More than any other story I've ever written, this is the most of myself that I've ever given to a project.

Thank you to everybody who has stayed with me on this project, as long as it has stretched. Your reviews, your messages, everything that you've been willing to share with me in return has meant a great deal. I am happy to see this story end, though I am also very sorry to see it go. I hope you enjoy my closure, and I wish you all the best.

I don't normally do this, but the song that inspired me (as thoughts from Akon to Mayuri) was Blue October's Ugly Side. It will always be their song.

WARNINGS: Gore and torture. Implied rape. Subsequent victim blaming. Drug use. M/F sex and M/M sex (mentions of and actual scenes). Abuse and breathplay.

I hate it when some Mayuri fans conveniently forget that he is a sociopath for the sake of a romance. I also hate it when people forget that Akon came from the same place and hold him up as some beacon of "good" compared to Mayuri. I'll say it now: they're both pretty fucked up. It's why they get along, why they stay together even when they wound one another. It's how I strive to write them.

* * *

><p>Ch 3: Michikake (満ち欠け) "The waxing and waning of the moon"<p>

_And now it's dark…  
>I look for you to light my heart.<br>I'm between the moon and where you are…  
>I know I can't be <em>

…_far_

Akon blinked his bleary eyes.

"What the…"

"Shhh." The pain stabbed into his arm as a high gage needle was shoved into the vein. "We have work to do. Come with me."

Suddenly he was calm. Akon was no longer surprised to find Mayuri in his room, nor did he care why he was there in the first place. The throbbing of his arm faded into the background like fog. He swung his feet over the edge of the bed, but the movement was tired, sluggish. He stood and took a step forward with a terrible lack of coordination. The drug made his movements too fast and his brain too slow.

"Come on. Hurry up." Mayuri looked at him blithely.

Akon shambled toward the doorway, banging an elbow against it. He continued down the two hallways that lead to the lab.

"I'll have to remember this when I want a laugh," said Mayuri. "You look incredibly stupid right now." Akon stood there, blank, uncaring.

"Over here, in there." Mayuri pointed at a strange apparatus that Akon had never seen before.

He guided Akon's hands through the straps so that he sort of hung forward, arms dangling.

Pain seared through the back of his head, again at his temple. A rivulet of blood trickled down into his eyes. A set of wires and electrodes had been implanted into him, and they buzzed in his head.

"Just to watch your vitals. You're lucky, I don't really want to kill you. You'd be incredibly difficult, if not expensive to replace."

"What is this?" The words came out more like a grunt than a question. Everything around him was spinning; Mayuri's voice echoed and echoed in his head.

"Something for me to know, and you to shut up about."

Mayuri shoved Akon's zanpakuto into his hand. Akon didn't remember taking it with him nor did he remember it in Mayuri's grasp. He tried to hold onto it, but it dropped like jelly through his hands and clattered onto the floor.

"I must have given you a little bit too much sedative." Mayuri sighed and picked the zanpakuto back up off of the concrete.

"Here." He placed it back into Akon's grip and began to wrap his hand shut with medical tape. Mayuri's fingers on his skin were cool and strangely comforting. Akon shut his eyes.

The cool hands slid up his bare arm and he felt a needle puncture his skin again, sinking deep into the muscle. He gritted his teeth.

"All done."

Akon opened his heavy-lidded eyes. Mayuri paced in front of him, still holding the syringe aloft in his left hand.

"This is my latest creation!" The man's face was alight. He paused and waved his free hand. "Don't worry, I've already tested it on several of the lower seated officers. You'll be fine."

He continued. "This drug has an interesting property, I assure you."

"Now," said Mayuri. "Manifest your shikai."

Akon's lips moved to speak the incantation that pulled his zanpakuto roaring to life, but the words simply wouldn't come. His tongue filled his mouth awkwardly and he coughed, choking on it. He twisted around the hilt that was fused to his hand, inspecting the blade. It was familiar, well-worn by his fingertips, but strangely he couldn't for the life of him remember what it was called. He tried again but a deep non-physical pain, as if his heart was breaking—no, being ripped to shreds filled him, like he had suffered his greatest loss without ever breathing its name. His soul was ripped in two…

Mayuri calmly observed the emotions that flashed across Akon's face: surprise, disbelief, sadness, anger, horror.

"Curious." Mayuri smiled like a knife. "You're my 3rd seat, my assistant director, and even you are not immune."

"What is this?" Akon asked. He forced himself to calm, to focus on the man who stood before him who held Akon's life in his hands. Anxiety was pointless.

Just like in the children's game, Akon was falling backwards, waiting for Mayuri to catch him.

"I think you already know."

Yes, as foolish as he might be, Akon trusted him.

"This medication renders a temporary rift between a shinigami and his zanpakuto. " Mayuri paced in front of him. "I haven't gotten it to work any longer than two minutes, which is a shame."

"Even at a higher concentration?" Akon asked. Gods did he ache. The rift within him grew wider, deeper, hopeless.

Mayuri sighed. "I've tried that already, but it gets broken down in the body so easily, no matter the carrier substance. The half-life of the drug is disgustingly short."

Mayuri turned to scribble some words into a laboratory notebook. There were still things Akon wanted to know.

"Why drug me?" Akon slurred. I'd have let you…

"I needed to see your naïve reactions, your distress. Your brain waves were off the charts!" He patted the frame that Akon hung in. "Besides, you might have broken something if you were all there. It would be a waste of funding replacing everything you'd have broken."

Akon felt the pain deep in his soul lighten, the sun rising inside of him. He was knitting himself back together, the broken fusing whole. He relaxed.

Deftly, Mayuri removed the electrodes and cut through the tape on his hand. He disentangled Akon from the maze of straps leaving Akon unbalanced, swaying on his feet. He caught Akon's chest in one hand as Akon fell forward.

"Nemu!" He cried.

Akon jumped as the melancholic woman stepped out from the shadows. How long had she been there?

"Yes, Mayuri-sama."

"Take him back to his quarters. I don't have time to trifle myself with such matters."

Nemu bowed. Akon felt her pull his arm over her shoulders and snake her free arm across his back. She slid his zanpakuto into her obi, where the protruding hilt dug into his ribs. Her hair brushed down the side of his face and Akon took a deep breath into it. Her perfume was a bouquet of chemicals, nitrile and smoke; she smelled like _him_. Akon grew warm. Why, he did not know.

Once again, the pressure of sleep threatened his mind. Together they stumbled down the hall, an odd two-headed, four legged beast. She laid him down into his bed, stowing his blade on a shelf above the headboard. Standing vigil, she waited patiently until the tranquilizers finally put him to sleep. Soft like a whisper, she was gone before the latch of his door.

xXx

Akon pulled Nemu into the storeroom, locking the door behind him. This was what people did at times like this, yes? While the cat's away the mice will play…

He swept a hand up the side of Nemu's face; she didn't back away.

"If we don't get back to work, Mayuri-sama will—"

He covered her lips with his, and she pushed back with just as much strength as he gave. It struck him as odd, how her protests gave way to wanting, without any firm push. She now clung to him, body language siren-calling for him to come even closer.

Was she engineered this way?

Akon stared deep into her deep green eyes. Still empty. Nothing new. She just hung there, under his hands, waiting for something.

Akon smiled. "We'll get the work done." He stepped forward, backing her against a wall. "The director will be gone until tomorrow night. As assistant director, I say that we can have a half hour to ourselves, and then we'll work twice as hard."

Nemu still stared at him with that empty gaze. He couldn't tell how she felt about their encounters, but she always yielded, taking him into her arms. Sometimes he too would feel lost in her dreamlike trance, but he knew better. She was nothing more than a living, breathing, feminine anesthetic. He might as well be in the chem lab huffing ether for the blissful high, as it was just as dangerous.

He let a hand run over her breast and squeezed, exploring the masterpiece that he had once created. Sometimes when they kissed, he could imagine her without skin, slimy and seinewy, without life, and strangely, this spurned him on further. He bit at the soft skin behind her ear, which earned him a slight 'oh' in return.

He peeled off her kimono, but he knew better than to fuck her. There was no telling what traps Mayuri had laid in her body. So, he pinned her against the wall, crossed her legs and oiled her thighs. He fit himself between the crossed legs, and she squeezed back around him, urging him on.

The little sounds she made, the way her back arched as he rubbed past her, he never knew exactly what they meant. Had she been engineered to do this; was this part of her job, too?

Even though he never knew, it didn't stop him from catching her. That scent that floated up from her skin was so soothing, like he was fucking the goddess of science herself. He pushed her palms flat against the wall and she stood on her tiptoes. He grabbed her hips and thrust past her again and again, each with more strength than the last. His hands roved up the front of her body and he squeezed her as he threw back his head and came.

He panted, spent. He let his hands drop, marveling in how he was covered in sweat, but Nemu was still cool and dry. Nemu turned her head around and caught his lips. It was a chaste kiss, and that was all she was good at doing, really, probably because she had some drug stored in her tongue. What it meant, he had no idea, but he didn't really want to know anyhow. With Nemu, it was just better not to think. She was created from Mayuri's flesh and blood, his mind and like Mayuri, she preferred action over nothing but words.

He watched her dress and clean up the mess he'd made, wiping down the inside of her thighs. She straightened up her clothes and turned to face him. She bowed gracefully and regarded him again, doe-eyed, pausing before leaving the tiny storeroom. The door clicked shut behind her.

Somehow it never was how it was supposed to be. This time was no different. Akon felt even emptier than before. Perhaps he would go to the chem lab for some ether after all, so he could brainstorm a magnum opus while his mind played in the clouds. Sometimes all it took was a project to make Akon forget and lose himself, to be reborn. He plugged the lonely holes with halfway surreal trysts with Nemu and the athletic brand of lust and blunt support he found in the new vice captain of the 9th squad.

Still, science was a better lover. Sometimes when he awoke at night, a warm body sleeping peacefully beside him, he couldn't help but wonder why his panacea has never been a person. He had never walked the path well traveled, yet somehow he has never felt alone.

xXx

"Don't move. If I make a mistake, it would be your fault, not mine."

Akon pumped his hands one last time. He was strapped down so tightly that he could do little more than flex his major muscle groups futilely. Sometimes he thought that throwing out venomless threats was Mayuri's version of small talk, but who could say?

In fact, the image of Mayuri inquiring about anybody's personal life or describing the fairness of that day's weather was so deeply incongruent that his brain didn't compute the whole thing. Unknowingly, Akon smiled, but it was swiftly brought to his attention with the swipe of a fingertip across his lips. It tickled a bit, a blush rising to his cheeks in return.

"I don't remember telling a joke," Mayuri said as he leaned over Akon.

The frigid fingers framed Akon's face, positioning his skull on the stainless steel of the operating table. They held his jaw squarely shut, so even if he had wanted to speak, there would have been no point.

"Now, where did I put the local?" Mayuri sighed. "I'm only doing this because you asked so nicely."

Akon could hear the director rummaging around somewhere above his head as he muttered to himself.

"Ah!"

A pinprick pushed into Akon's forehead. Within seconds, the skin above his eyes grew numb and rubbery feeling. He furrowed his brow, but he couldn't figure out whether he had done it or not through his deadened skin.

Akon knew the local wouldn't help with the more daunting part of the procedure. Bone related pain was severe. But still, even he didn't relish the thought of feeling the skin of his face under a scalpel.

He had wanted to do it himself, but cutting into his forehead and watching the surgery progress through a mirror was harder to do dexterously than he had thought. Now he was in the most skilled hands he could possibly be, and Akon knew that true skill came with its own price.

There, he heard it, the soft rip of his skin splitting under a blade. A _snick_ sort of sound. The pain pulsed dully above his brow, hardly there, the skin ripped open to the bone. The blood dripped down his temple as Mayuri cut. Akon closed his eyes.

Soft gauze was swept up the side of his face, over the blood trails and was dabbed at the wounds. It was so odd, gentle, graceful. Like the patience of a mother cleaning a young child's dirtied face. Right now he had the perfect face for that mother to love.

He opened his eyes just in time to catch Mayuri pondering the circular blade of the trephine in his hands, one of the oldest of all surgical tools, from the dawn of man when it was used to release "spirits" from the head. Yes, he heard the spirits, too.

"Almost done. You know that I couldn't knock you out without being able to tell whether or not you had brain function when I hook these in," said Mayuri. "And any further anesthetic will interfere with the synthetic neural connectivity."

"Yeah, I know," said Akon. "Everything should work though if we do it as is."

Akon's skull was laid bare under Mayuri's hands. Mayuri took the trephine in his left hand, his strongest hand, and pressed the blade down on the bone.

"You want the pattern you drew?" He asked.

"Would you have done it different?" Akon looked up at him.

"Hmmm, this is a good start," Mayuri mused. "I might actually make you attractive." He dragged his other hand down the side of Akon's face.

Akon's eyes grew wide and his heart began to race. But before he could think about anything, Mayuri turned the trephine, the teeth of the blade digging into the bone of his skull. The pain throbbed with every turn Mayuri made. The sound of the metal sawing through his skull resonated in the sinuses of his head. He'd heard it before, but now it had a different, lower frequency. It was funny, the differences you heard when the skull was yours and not someone else's. He clenched his teeth and looked up at Mayuri who looked as if he had entered some sort of zen-like state.

Mayuri pulled his hand back, pushing out the little circle of bone from the trephine's cavity and plopping the blood-slick thing into Akon's palm.

"A souvenir," he said with some amusement before returning to Akon's head.

Mayuri repeated the procedure two more times, giving him two more coins made from his own bone. The muscles in Akon's jaw stood out as he tried to shoulder the pain, his breath rushing in and out of his nose strong and deliberately. Again, Mayuri wiped up the blood, but it was not as much as from when he cut the blood rich skin. Instead, Mayuri took his time sawing through the bone and its tangled weave of nerves, curiously watching Akon, making notes of the strengthening pulse and the face that tried to show nothing at all, even though the struggle was so palpable to Mayuri and it excited him.

Mayuri held a horn between two fingers, rolling it in front of Akon's eyes. He could see the synthetic nerves that sprung out from the bottom. Mayuri squinted at it and positioned it into one of the holes. He rubbed a gel around it that instantly solidified, fusing it into the bone. He flicked the horn.

"Do you feel that?" He said.

"It's dull, but yeah," said Akon. "Put in the others."

With each horn added, the pain dulled significantly, the raw bone and severed nerve net recovering during the merger with the grafted tissues. Akon began to relax again. He looked up at Mayuri who was now cutting the flap of skin to fit around the horns. He stretched it over them, easing it down around their bases. He used the gel again to merge the flap of skin back with the rest. Some people liked to have the scars. Akon would rather have people wonder.

Mayuri met his eyes, then he smiled. "It'll hurt for a few days while everything gets settled, but this is certainly an improvement."

"Thank you, director," Akon breathed. "Is there something specific you need me to work on?"

Mayuri looked at him coolly. "Clean up here first. It's your blood after all."

Akon nodded.

Mayuri cocked his head. "You managed to get me all of the funding from the Men's Shinigami Association this year. Take a quarter of it and invent whatever you think will please me most. If it doesn't pique my interests…I'll come up with a better use for you that you may or may not like."

Akon grinned. He ran the three circular pieces of his bloodied skull over one another in his palm. He'd have to clean them up and keep them as a charm. The 12th was full of weirdos. He wasn't any different, and he knew several people who'd probably like to see. How jealous they would be about his bragging rights, that he had gone under Mayuri's knife and was more badass because of it.

Today was a very good day.

xXx

A light hand knocked on the door. Akon moved to open it.

It was Nemu. Akon stared at her strangely. It had been a while since he had stopped calling her out for personal use. Even when they had that sort of relationship, she didn't usually seek him out, and when she did contact him, it was strictly for work during the day. He let her in, as it had to be important.

"I have urgent business outside the Seireitei," she spoke emotionlessly.

"Okay. Do you need me to go with you?"

Akon had been getting ready to go to bed, but if he had to put that off for something important, so be it. He looked down at his night clothes and reached for his shihakushou hanging on a hook.

"No."

He cocked his head a bit as he looked at her. Sure, he knew Nemu's people skills weren't great, but this was unusual even for her.

"Then why are you here?" Akon asked, somewhat grouchily. Something was going on.

She produced a bottle of _something_ from behind her back. Akon took it in his hands. It was…some sort of soap or shampoo maybe? He unscrewed the top and smelled it. It smelled faintly of mint and perhaps lavender…

"Mayuri-sama will need this for his bath tonight, but I do not have the time to take it to him," said Nemu.

Something still seemed a little weird to Akon, but he did understand the struggle Nemu presented him. If she was late in her work, she would suffer Mayuri's wrath, but if something in Mayuri's personal life was off, no soul was spared. Everyone in the 12th bent themselves backwards to keep him happy. No one knew what flipped the switch from eccentric genius to abusive madman; it changed day to day.

"Sure, I'll take it to him." Akon bowed. "Go on your mission."

Nemu bowed in return. "He will be here now, in the baths. His private bath is broken at the moment," she mentioned before darting out the door.

Akon put his day clothes back on and looked out his doorway. Nemu was long gone. He took the bottle and walked down the hallway towards where the baths were housed.

Akon was still puzzled. Mayuri's private bath was broken? What an odd thing to have happen, and why wasn't it fixed? It was the bath of the captain of the 12th squad after all. It was the 12th's job to make repairs to broken works of engineering, just as much as it was the 4th's job to keep the Seireitei clean.

More than that, didn't Mayuri use that private bath to guard his appearance? Even when he had been in the Nest, even when he lived with Akon in the barracks, Akon had never once seen him among the bathers. Urahara had always let Mayuri have his way in the Nest, and there were any number of ways he could have gotten the 12th's public bath alone when he was 3rd seat. Or maybe he still had a deal with Urahara, then too.

Oh well. Akon sighed. He had no choice in the matter. It was near midnight, so Mayuri had picked a good time to go to not be seen.

Akon got to the doorway of the bath, the sterile white tile spotless on the walls and floors. He took his shoes off and put them in the shoe rack. He looked at the lockers, where he would have normally put his clothes, but stopped after he began to undo his hakama ties. He wasn't here to take a bath—he was just going to make a delivery. He'd contaminate nothing and leave as quickly as he came.

Gingerly, Akon stepped into the next room. There was the bathing room, completely empty except for Mayuri. The man sat in the nude with his back to him, balancing on a short wooden stool. Mayuri filled a bucket with water from the faucet in front of him. Carefully, he set it to his left. Akon's footsteps echoed against the walls as he stepped closer.

"Ah, Akon," Mayuri said, not turning around. "I suppose you have something for me?"

Akon's pulse quickened. He drew a breath in.

Did Mayuri recognize him by his footsteps? Was he simply the only person Nemu would have asked to do this? And the ease with which he said his name, how it reverberated in the tiled room… Akon felt dizzy.

Mayuri raised the bucket over his head and poured the contents over his body. The water broke over his head, streaming down his shoulders, his chest, the small of his back. The bright blue of his hair was darkened and dampened and the white washed all onto the floor, swirling towards the drain. He turned on the faucet to fill the bucket again.

"Just put it there." Mayuri pointed to a shelf on the wall in front of him. "I want to be able to reach it, but I don't want to accidentally splash it and have it knocked over. It would be a waste of money. It's the only thing that can keep my skin in good working order."

Mayuri went back to letting the water from the bucket rush over his body. With each wave, the pale washed away, the paint stubbornly holding on, its resolve growing weaker by the deluge. It was a curious thing. Akon continued to walk over to him, but the closer he got, the slower his steps became.

"Akon?"

The director was talking to him. But he couldn't make himself move.

Mayuri sighed and stood up to face him. "Give me that, please."

It was a different type of body than Akon had expected. The skin was dark, and the feral yellow of his eyes stood out from the tan even more than they had from the white paint. The scars, yes he had always expected the scars, cut into the skin every which way. Akon could tell that each limb had been amputated at least twice before he had perfected his famous regeneration serum. The cuts rested over his sternum—perhaps an open heart surgery? And another one traveled from a hip all the way down past…

Akon then remembered the first time he had ever met Mayuri…and his aversion to staring. He flinched, bracing for impact.

"My eyes are up here." The voice was joking, gentle and soothing. Akon opened his eyes, surprised.

Mayuri sighed. He rubbed the knob on his chin.

"This is why I don't walk around in public like this. The idiots out there would stare at me even more than they do after I get ready in the morning."

Mayuri shook his head. "What do you think? Should I walk out there like this? Let them all behold the glory?"

Akon gulped. Akon tried to always know what to do to fit Mayuri's preferences, but now nothing sprang to mind. Was Mayuri actually going crazy? Was he making a joke? Was he just screwing around with Akon's mind for the hell of it? This was the worst case scenario Akon could have.

"It's not like they don't think that I have a few screws loose already." Mayuri laughed to himself. "I'll give them all a shock. It's not every day you get to see such a fantastic specimen!"

Akon tried to step backwards, but Mayuri just stepped closer. He closed the space between them and wrapped around behind Akon with a feline grace.

"What's the point of having a mind as well as a body if you can't…enhance…it?" He whispered into Akon's ear, his mouth just a millimeter from the skin.

Akon could feel his face flushing as he could feel Mayuri's breath on him. He closed his eyes and his heart squeezed in his chest. His body was on fire. The bottle, which he was clutching desperately, was ripped out of his hands, but still, he felt the breath there lingering, lasting a moment longer than it should have. Several empty seconds that held a universe inside. A supernova of possibility erupting with every heartbeat.

And then it was gone.

"Ah well." Mayuri stepped back towards his stool. "If that's the case, you may go. I thought you may have been interested in a bath, too."

"I—um—took one this morning. Th—thanks for thinking of me, though." Akon bowed more deeply than he'd ever bowed before. "Please excuse me for the night."

"Yes, yes. Go on." Mayuri waved a hand.

Mayuri turned his back and began to lather himself up with the soap. Akon stood there in a daze, watching as Mayuri rubbed his body, taking in the sensuality of it, before pulling himself away. Akon staggered into the dressing room and put his shoes back on. From there, he uneasily stumbled down the hallway. It was as if the walls kept turning around him.

"Are you alright?"

Akon slammed into Rin. Rin squinted, tilting his head. "Forgive me, but you don't look so good."

"I'm fine." What was he saying? He wasn't fine. He was anything but fine! "Leave me alone."

"I don't believe you." Rin crossed his arms over his chest. "I know you like to burn the midnight oil and work late, but you should probably lie down and rest or something. It's been weeks since we've had a workplace accident—I'd hate to be the one telling the director that the streak has been broken."

"Right. Rest." Akon breathed in deeply. Rin was right, he needed to do something. He gazed past Rin down the hallway, his mind spaced.

Rin grabbed a hold of his shoulder. "Steady."

"Huh?" Akon was jolted back to reality.

Rin smiled. "Be steady, like you always are. You'll get more work done."

He straightened Akon's labcoat and looked down. "Well, that's funny. How did you get…is that shampoo all over your leg like that?"

Akon paused.

He looked down the front of hakama. A thick glycerin syrup was squeezed all on the side of one leg and ended halfway up his hip.

Rin knitted his brows together deep in thought and looked down the direction of the hallway behind Akon. A shadowy figure emerged from the bathroom, walking with a familiar jaunt, staccato and quick. Rin's eyes widened; he took in a deep breath.

Rin cleared his throat. "I won't ask, but just take care of yourself. We need your brain in order to get things to run right."

"I'll be fine," Akon said, staring at his feet. "I'm just going to go change and work on a project to go clear my mind."

Rin blushed. "Ummm," he stalled. Akon looked up, meeting his gaze, which only made him redder. "You know, you might want to take a cold shower. Trust me, you can't get anything done like that."

Akon glared. That couldn't be his problem. It couldn't be. There was only a meeting of minds, just as it had always been. The warmth that pooled within him was…

"I'm sorry," Rin squeaked. He laughed nervously, watching the clouds roll across Akon's face. "There I go again, saying silly things. Now, I really must be going!"

Rin skittered down the hall; Akon however was frozen in place.

xXx

The light shined through the crack of the door as it was opened. Akon opened his eyes a sliver at the brightness.

Mayuri hadn't come in the night for weeks; it was time, Akon supposed.

The familiar plastic was tied above his elbow, followed by the familiar prick into the vein. The rush of liquid through the barrel of the syringe was comforting in its own way, and so was the stream of cool liquid flowing into his blood. After hundreds of times, he had long since gotten over the terror of these late night visits—he understood that inspiration had no alarm clock. He was in the core staff; he had little more to worry about other than the occasional nausea or superpowers.

Akon's lids felt heavy. The world around him felt misty and purple.

"Roll over onto the cot," the voice said.

Akon rolled, but how, he had no idea. His body was a glorious black box.

"I have a special job for you, now," the voice continued.

_Mmmm. _

Akon shivered in the way the voice tickled in his ears. Another needle was jabbed into him, but whatever he had before made his mind explode with pleasure at the wound. Akon tried to open his eyes and when he did, he saw everything in quadruplicate. He closed them again as sleep pulled at his mind.

The cool hands brushed over his horns, burying themselves in his hair, massaging his scalp. Akon shivered as he stroked against the grain of the growth. His head was tilted to one side, then the other, the same cool hand under his chin. Akon opened his mouth slightly, panting. He let out a little noise as the hand pulled away.

The hands closed around his throat and squeezed, the two thumbs pressing into the hollow below his Adam's apple. Akon reached up, grabbing at the hands that threatened to choke him, but his brain was a kaleidoscope of new images and sensations. A brightly colored flower growing from the earth, the sky staring up from the bottom of the ocean, the weightlessness of outer space. His heart began to race and his lungs fought for air, but the hands tightened over his throat and adrenaline flowed through his body. The pressure let up, and a hand reached down between his legs, gripping him firmly. Akon didn't remember being hard, but between the drugs and asphyxiation, the hallucinations and the hands, yes those hands….

Now the hands roamed around the planes of his chest. His heart was thumping wildly, trying to jump right into the palm above it, a fitting gift from an unworthy secret admirer.

"Good, good."

Akon felt lips upon his and he tried to reciprocate but everything was going black. He was feeling nothing, he was thinking nothing, and he was aware of nothing. After all, it was all just a dream, and he was asleep….

Akon awoke on the operating table. His mind was still groggy from the anesthesia, but this wasn't too uncommon. He stretched waiting for the soreness in his abdomen from wherever the incision had been made, but it never came. There was a dull ache in his hips, but he ignored it.

He remembered Mayuri coming in the night before, but then he had the wildest of dreams that he couldn't remember clearly. It was odd; he never dreamed under anesthesia. Sure, he knew about 22% of all patients experienced dreams, but he had gone through this for years and years.

The cold of the steel sapped him more than usual, and he realized that he was naked except for a small towel that had been laid over him. He sat up, wincing as the blood rushed to his head. No really, what had happened last night? As he straightened up, he felt somewhat sore in his core, unlike anything he had ever felt.

His clothing lay neatly folded on a chair, and he slipped off the table, stumbling as he walked towards it. With his head against the wall, he had enough leverage to stand. He dressed himself, tying his hakama, when the door opened behind him.

"My goodness! Akon!"

Megane-san put her tray of supplies on the counter with a clatter and rushed up to Akon.

She ran her fingers over his shoulders, the back of his neck. He looked back at her and she scowled at him.

"You shouldn't let him mark you up this much if you don't want people to talk about it!" Her cheeks flushed.

Akon batted her hands away. "What are you talking about? Everybody knows that joining the 12th has the occupational hazard of random drugged out surgeries in the middle of the night." A dark smile crossed his face. "It's when you learn who his favorites are."

"We all knew it was bound to happen, and when Rin caught you guys doing who-the-hell-knows-what a few weeks ago, we all knew something was going on. You don't have to be shy to me," said Megane-san.

"Look. I don't know what the hell you're talking about. Either be straight with me or shut the fuck up." Akon yelled. He didn't know why his fuse was so short, but something just made him so angry.

A cloudy expression came to her face. "Oh. I see…you don't know, then." She took a hand mirror out of her pocket, handing it to him. "I think you should go look at yourself in the mirror over there."

Akon stood with his back to the floor length mirror, staring at it secondhand through the little compound. There were scratches across his shoulder blades, and an assortment of other marks. Some that looked distinctly like they had been made with teeth.

He stood there, dumb, trying to comprehend everything. These marks with the ache inside him… Now, Akon didn't know how to feel.

Mayuri had wanted him so badly, he had tried to seduce him, and Akon was so startled that he didn't even see it until he thought about it weeks later. Mayuri had wanted him so badly, he took him for himself. And Akon felt numb.

It was like he was living his life in a 3rd person view. People felt angry when things like this happened. They felt sad. They felt like a victim. But somehow he couldn't feel any of those things. It was just there, like a slide under a microscope. He could sit there and examine every little detail, but it still only gave him observations rather than answers.

Mayuri wanted him and somehow that made his heart ache. And even after all this, Akon wanted Mayuri too. Never in a million years did he think that he could hold Mayuri's attention. Here again, Akon was just a child lying on the floor of his cell, staring up at the only man he'd ever admired. Gods, why was this love so hard?

Mayuri should have known that Akon would have done anything had he asked for it. Hell, anyone on staff would, some for different reasons than others. But this was different.

Was this fear on Mayuri's part? He knew the man was paranoid, but if it really was a fear of rejection…no that didn't make sense either.

Akon shook his head. He didn't understand. Maybe it was a matter so unlike him that he couldn't understand. Maybe Akon was simply too stupid and he should have predicted this already. Yes, that was probably it. Yet again he was chasing the mind that burned brighter than he was capable of catching.

Either way, it didn't matter. What's done is done. And the future…who knows.

"Hand me my haori," Akon said softly.

Megane nodded and picked up the neatly folded garment from the nearby counter. She held it open, offering a sleeve, helping him into it. She smoothed the fabric over his shoulders.

"Hang on a minute," she said. "I'll be back." She returned holding a makeup box. "Your clothing covers most of it, but there are a few places over here. I'll help you cover it up."

"Thanks," said Akon. "I thought it was odd that I didn't have an incision or something taken out or whatever."

"No." She sighed as she painted. "He took something else."

After five minutes of work she was done. "You be careful, okay? I don't like this."

Akon smiled wryly at her, a mask belying the depths of his thoughts. "Did you really think it would go any different?"

"I suppose. Still doesn't make it right." She frowned. "But I understand it."

He turned to go out the door.

"Akon, " she called. He turned around.

"Be careful with him, I mean it!"

Akon was always careful. That had been his problem. Now Akon didn't know what to do. At least in the lab, he was useful. Everywhere else…now, he wasn't so sure.

Xxx

Akon stepped into Mayuri's room. Mayuri and Nemu had gone off on a mission two weeks prior and had returned two days ago. This would be routine except for the fact that Mayuri had returned in his indestructible goo-like state. Nemu had to be retrieved by a field party, as she managed to get herself to a semi-safe location before passing out, and all missing body parts were recovered from the surrounding area. No matter who asked, Mayuri wouldn't give any details as to what he was doing or who damaged him this badly.

Reporting in to Mayuri, Akon had to admit was a little funny. He'd holed himself up in the empty bathtub in his quarters and gave orders as a gelatinous blob, Akon acting as a go-between while Nemu's extensive damage was being healed as well. But still, his relationship with Mayuri had taken a lot of strain. It wasn't as easy of a partnership as it could have been. And Akon, he wasn't any more socially adept than Mayuri was, so the hole grew wider and deeper.

The third day, Mayuri had congealed into his usual state.

"I can tell from the clunky way you walk that you're not Nemu." Mayuri sat with his back to him. "I guess that means you still haven't fixed her, then."

Akon cleared his throat. "Hiyosu is doing the best he can with limited information, and told me that she'll be ready tomorrow."

"Limited information," Mayuri sneered. He sighed. "I see. I should have lowered my expectations for a repair like that. Or maybe I should have just told him to let her be and I'd do it when I reformed."

Akon knew something had gone horribly wrong, but Mayuri wouldn't even mention what they fought, so of course fixing Nemu with no information was going to take a long time. Mayuri was notorious for his mood swings, but even for him, the sheer cattiness had lasted for days already.

Ever since that one night Mayuri avoided him. The fact that Nemu was out of order was the only thing that had brought the two of them together. Usually, in a situation like this one, Akon was the one who became the sounding board who could ferret out a detail that could make the processes in the lab run faster when the director was indisposed. But now, it was like there was a wall between them, and Mayuri was always acting, acting, acting in his grandiose manner. The more he projected himself, the more he shut others out.

Akon laughed inwardly. Honestly, what did he expect? He was such a fool. A starry-eyed, self-absorbed fool. But he was as spiteful as he was thankful. Maybe this was the best lesson Mayuri could have given him. After Mayuri had explored a little of his interest in him, of course he wouldn't want him anymore. Akon wasn't worthy of that. People like them didn't get to have happiness, did they? Life was cruel and cut both ways.

Akon took a deep breath. He looked at the two bowls he had been asked to carry. One held black paint, one held white. He set the bowls on the table and turned to leave.

A fist thudded on the wall as it slammed down. "Do you expect me to do this myself?" Mayuri growled. "I can't reach everywhere, you know."

Akon rolled his eyes. "What did you do before we made Nemu?"

"Obviously, my patterns were much simpler and required less dexterity, but it's not like you'd have noticed," Mayuri spat.

Mayuri stood up and turned around to face Akon for the first time this morning. The Mayuri before him was a rare one indeed—a blank slate. Not only could he see his rich, dark skin with a constellation of scars, he was seeing Mayuri in his most natural state. There were no fake arms, no ear implants other than the simple grates that let him hear, no hidden tricks anywhere. This was Mayuri in his weakest incarnation, something that actually awed him a bit. It is at this point that they would be most "equal", even while Akon still clutched like a child at Mayuri's knees.

Akon had an idea. Something had to quell the ache inside him. Something had to break through this numbness so he could feel again. He didn't care what he felt. It could be anything, even pain, any sort of acknowledgement would be better than this.

Akon grabbed the bowls back up. He deliberately stepped closer. He felt the burning yellow gaze on him, and it was doing things to him that he was going to regret, but not now. Oh, not now.

"Well come on then. I've been patient enough," taunted Mayuri.

Akon smiled. He was about a step away from Mayuri, still. He looked one final time at the pots.

He raised the pot that held the white paint and dropped it. The ceramic shattered, the paint splattering over the space between their bodies. He raised the other one above his head and let it drop. The black splashed up, marking like faux blood stains.

"You're the genius here." Akon wiped a black spatter of paint across his face. "Do it yourself."

Mayuri's eyes widened and his mouth was fixed open in a mixture of surprise and speechlessness. After a second, his left eye began to twitch and his entire body began to tremble. Akon still stared him down, knowing that any glance away could give him a chance to move.

"You…you dare!?" Mayuri hissed.

Akon's hair stood on end. Adrenaline coursed through his veins. He put his chest forward with pride and braced his stance at the same time. Still their eyes were locked on to each other's gaze.

Mayuri moved first and he backhanded Akon, who reached back and socked him with a punch square in the jaw. Akon lunged at him, but Mayuri used his momentum to guide him into the wall beside him. Mayuri grabbed onto Akon's horns and pulled and Akon cursed, taking the opening on the left side for a sucker punch in the gut. Akon could tell, both of them were rusty fighters, largely abandoning these acts to the barbarians of the 11th, but they were both trained in every art of war. Both of them were killers.

Mayuri was smaller than Akon, and he used that to give him speed. In a way Akon was impressed. He was seeing a Mayuri who existed hundreds of years ago, a child learning to cause as much pain as possible when his stature was small and his endurance was weak, putting trust in the fact that his brain was superior to his opponent. Akon wondered what happened to them all, if any of them still stood. But was that true here? Akon had a few inches on Mayuri, and his frame had more heft, but where did his mind fall?

He saw Mayuri search the room and his eyes settled somewhere behind him. Mayuri surged forward, aiming for his ribs, and pushed to reach the wall. Akon grabbed him, and tackled him to the ground. They struggled, rolling over each other, throwing the odd punch, now kicking at each other. Akon had no idea what Mayuri was heading for, so every time he moved to crawl forward, Akon put all his energy into a throw in the opposite direction. Mayuri moved to throttle Akon, but Akon grabbed his wrists and pinned him. Wrong idea. Mayuri punished Akon with a knee to the nuts.

As Akon gasped and tried to ignore the pain in his groin, Mayuri lunged for the table. Then Akon saw it: Mayuri's zanpakuto. Akon threw himself at Mayuri, grabbing the sword at the same time, using his weight to slam Mayuri into the wall. Neither one let go and Akon just pushed forward, pinning Mayuri beneath the scabbard, both of his hands still holding on. The spikes on the hilt stabbed into Akon's shoulder, blood welling around the punctures, but he didn't care. Pain fueled him.

Akon's body was flush with Mayuri's. Both panted with exertion, and Akon could feel Mayuri's heartbeat through his skin. A bit of blood sprung from a cut in Mayuri's lip, but Akon was the one with the bloody nose. He stared deep into Mayuri's eyes, trying to read them, but he couldn't tell whether he saw anger, desperation, or fear.

They both hung there, like that for what seemed like forever. If it was Mayuri normally, there would have been insults and jeers in the fighting, but he stayed silent, as if he was expecting something. Akon knew that if Mayuri really wanted to, he could blast him with kido and then take his sword, but still, he held this position, body in full contact with Akon, his eyes now probing Akon for meaning.

A strange feeling flickered in Akon's chest. He put even more of his weight into Mayuri and leaned his head in closer, touching foreheads, sliding one of Mayuri's legs between his thighs. He kissed his lips gently. He pulled back, surprised at his own tenderness. Now Mayuri's eyes were blank.

Akon kissed him again, with more force, and this time, Mayuri kissed back. That odd feeling had returned and Akon stepped back, but didn't let go of the zanpakuto, still pinning Mayuri down. Akon looked away.

"Why?" He whispered. "I'd have let you do anything. Why?"

Mayuri was silent. There was no more fear, no more anger, just nothing. He half closed his eyes, nothing betraying his sphinx-like image.

"Why!?" Akon growled and shoved his weight into the blade across Mayuri's chest again.

After a period of silence, face thoughtful, as if he had _never before_ examined his motivations, Mayuri spoke.

"I know you'd have done anything, but that means little to me. I know anyone in the 12th would do anything I ask. You're no different."

Akon grit his teeth. "Fuck you!"

Mayuri continued, his voice now taking on a sing-song quality.

"Some would comply because they're afraid I'll kill or torture or experiment on them if they refuse. Some people have odd kinks they think I'll scratch. Some would do it to try and earn a better seat, more research funding or materials. Some have their eyes on a Captain's salary. Some would do it for the shock value, the fame. Then, there are those who are simply curious about what I look like under the paint, what other modifications I have, never mind whether they are erotic or mundane."

Mayuri focused on Akon. "I've watched you for a long time, Akon, but I still don't know what category you fit into. The world is frightfully small, and everyone else is _so_ easy to read."

Akon's eyes widened. He stepped backwards. The zanpakuto clattered to the floor now that neither of them had any tension on it.

"What?" Akon said in disbelief. "How could you think that—"

"I'm not to blame here!" Mayuri yelled, his features turning hostile again. "You've spent over a century by my side, when everybody discards me after I've been of any use, when they lock me away. Even after I built Nemu, so I'd never have to rely on you, you stayed by my side. I ask the same question of you. Why!?"

Mayuri got a thoughtful look upon his face. "Was it so that I'd name you assistant director and you could inherit everything should I die?" He paused. "But I did and you haven't tried to kill me yet…"

Akon shook his head. He began to laugh, sparsely at first, then building to a crescendo. He sighed.

"Somehow I've led the smartest man to make the stupidest conclusions," Akon said.

Mayuri cocked his head. Akon looked down, avoiding Mayuri's eyes.

"I am a category all my own."

Akon balled his hands into fists. He bowed his head.

"Now, it's only a question of if you'd believe me."

Mayuri's face calmed. His eyes were still wary, wild like a fox, but behind them Akon could see the comprehension of his words.

"You always were stubborn in your own way," said Mayuri. "Even then."

Even if Akon was stubborn, it was still the mind Mayuri molded; it was still the heart he was petrified of touching. The heart that was his and his alone.

Akon looked down at his body and then over at Mayuri. There were splashes of the black paint, of the white paint. They had rolled around in it, the mess on the floor, trying to gain the upper hand, and now much of everything was grey. Yes, grey. That was fitting.

He saw a bead of white paint on Mayuri's cheek and he reached out, smearing it across his face. But really, he just wanted the feel of his skin beneath his fingertips. Akon leaned forward, his mouth grazing Mayuri's lips. Even though he'd kissed him a moment ago, there was always some part of him that had expected him to be cool to the touch, like the temperature of a gigai, before you fixed the soul within it. But, it was warm to the touch, hot even.

Mayuri pushed forward and reached up, running his fingers through Akon's hair. He grabbed Akon by his haori and slammed him into the wall, lips connecting with his jawline, teeth catching at his throat. Akon had to smile at the sudden super-alpha persona Mayuri threw on, and he threw his head back, exposing more skin for Mayuri to take. He ran his hands down Mayuri's sides, counting the ribs, scratching down the hollow to his hips. Akon ripped at the ties of Mayuri's hakama, to which he received a light slap across his cheek. Akon grinned impishly at Mayuri who simply gave him a sidelong glance.

"You're wearing entirely too much clothing," Mayuri bickered.

"I wasn't aware that a summons to your quarters required me to be naked," said Akon dryly.

"From this point on, how about you assume it does," said Mayuri.

He ripped off Akon's haori and threw it on the floor. Akon turned his attention to Mayuri's bare shoulder, tongue following a scar that crossed down below his collarbone. This time they both wrestled with the ties of each others hakama. Akon slid his fingers down the side and to the front, reaching down to feel the trailing tuft of hair. He ground a leg against Mayuri, feeling his hardness against his thigh. Mayuri grabbed a hold of his hips and pushed him back.

"Honestly. It's like you just want it all to be over or something. Humping my leg like some rutting canine," said Mayuri with disdain. He got one side of Akon's hakama free and moved to the other.

Akon moved back in so that his body was in full contact with Mayuri again. He circled his hips so that his own hardness rubbed against Mayuri's. "You're the one who can't strip me fast enough."

"You are so annoying," said Mayuri.

Akon's hakama finally fell down to the floor and Mayuri undid his own. The paint that was on Mayuri's chest was rubbing off onto Akon. Akon fell to his knees, scraping his nails down Mayuri's chest, his abs, and held onto his hipbones. He pushed Mayuri to the wall behind him, pressing him there. Mayuri looked at him curiously, daring him. He ran a hand over Akon's horns.

Akon could feel his heart thundering in his ears. He was trying so hard to keep up an aggressive façade, but now that the edge of the fighting was wearing off, his nerves jumped to the forefront. It was now catching up to him what was going to happen. He was voluntarily servicing Mayuri, and Mayuri wanted him as well, as if the sight of him now wasn't enough. Sure, Akon was no stranger to sex, his curious mind leading him to a variety of partners, his perfectionist streak leading him to skill. But none of those would scrape what he was going to do now. What he felt for Mayuri went beyond words, and the messy physical joining with his body he could offer suddenly felt like a gesture that was so base, completely unworthy of the man he followed for so long.

He took Mayuri's length in his mouth, letting the head run across the ridges of his hard palette, the smooth skin beyond, the spongy skin towards his throat. He sucked as he pulled his head back and flicked the underside of the head with his tongue. Akon could hear Mayuri's heavy breathing and he continued his slow rhythm, tantric almost. He swirled his tongue, seeking out the taste of Mayuri's skin, the salt of the precum when he licked inside the slit. Pulling Mayuri out of his mouth, he ran the flat of his teeth up and down the shaft, over the frenulum, sharing a new sensation. Then he took him back in again deep, working up and down, faster.

It was now that Akon looked up, the electricity crackling in the air when his dark eyes met Mayuri's intense gaze. As frightening as it was, Akon couldn't look away, he was drawn to it. He could only imagine what was going on behind that face. He could see the desire, but there were other emotions there that confused him. There were traces of jealousy, longing, and relief, but none of those made much sense to him.

Akon moved a hand down to cup his balls, a move that made Mayuri jolt. He rolled them gently as he continued to work his shaft, then moving his mouth to his hands to gently suck on the sensitive skin there. Mayuri's hand grabbed a hold of Akon's hair, pulling his mouth away. Akon looked at him, surprised.

Mayuri didn't let go. "On my futon," he said firmly, gripping harder. He ran his other hand across Akon's cheek, down his jaw, before letting him go.

Akon crept over to the futon that was on the opposite wall. He had just put a lot of effort into sucking Mayuri off, so he should be wet enough for a painless penetration. But maybe it wasn't enough, and Mayuri preferred it rougher. Akon was no stranger to mixing pain and pleasure, but he was about to have sex with a legend. He saw Mayuri rummaging around in a drawer, drawing out something small.

Akon lay on his back, the skin of his neck exposed, his legs spread, trying to look as appealing as he could. He was so nervous, but he tried his best to breathe deep and stay his heart. He wanted to be the best fuck Mayuri had ever had, and this meant more to him than he ever thought it would.

Mayuri turned to look at him. There was a little shock and confusion mixed in with the desire. That's when Akon finally understood. Right now was the first time Mayuri was experiencing something completely mutual. The warmth of the realization filled Akon's chest. He smiled.

"Hey. Get over here and fuck me, unless you want me to do the job myself." Akon glared at him in challenge.

"Pushy, pushy," said Mayuri.

Mayuri knelt down and showed Akon the tiny container he had pulled out of the drawer. "I invented this a while ago, and you were the one I wanted to try it on."

"What is it? Like a super lube or something?" asked Akon.

"No, it's far more clever than that. It's an aphrodisiac that responds to my desires. When I want you to feel an excess of pleasure, you will be in ecstasy. When you're getting too far along, it will bring you back to where I want you to be," said Mayuri. "Not many get the chance to be completely at the mercy of someone's desire. Only a true masochist can understand its beauty."

"So if you want to think me into an orgasm you can do it?" said Akon

"Yes. And if I want you to feel absolutely nothing even when I'm pounding you so hard that your hips ache and dislocate, you'll just have no choice but to be frustrated," Mayuri crooned.

"You made it just for me, huh?" Akon smiled, flattered. "Show me how well it works."

Mayuri coated his hand with the liquid and rubbed it into Akon's cock, Akon squirming as Mayuri pumped it with his fist, he was starting to feel uncomfortably erect. The rest of the elixir, he thrust two fingers into Akon's ass, massaging it in deep. Akon let out a little whine as he pumped is fingers in and out.

"Hmmm. Seems to be working well," said Mayuri. "Nobody will ever be able to give you as much pleasure as I am going to give you now. Never forget that. I know where you go and who you see. Just remember," he said pointedly. Akon blushed at the insinuation, now knowing exactly how much Mayuri knew.

He threw one of Akon's legs over his shoulder and pressed himself against the entrance. Akon hissed as he entered, his muscles still tight.

"Relax, I know you can take me," said Mayuri. He grabbed Akon and started stroking him slowly as he continued to push in. Akon cried out as his muscles gave way and he took in the entirety of Mayuri's length. He looked at Mayuri, his cheeks flushed.

"More," he said. The sight of Mayuri into him deep as the hilt turned him on even more than he thought possible.

"I like to mark things that are mine," said Mayuri.

"I know," said Akon. "I'm not blind."

He began to kiss the skin of Akon's inner thigh roughly, tongue and teeth on skin. Akon moaned, his body taking on a life of its own. Mayuri ran his fingertip down the trail of marks, then scratched up to his knee. He leaned forward and began to fuck Akon, slowly at first, savoring every noise that fell from his lips. Mayuri's rhythm was deliberate and staccato, hitting that white hot place inside him with demonic precision.

It felt so good Akon might as well have had his eyes rolled back into his head, but he fought it. He reached up to Mayuri, running his hands through the lanky blue hair, over the grates of his ears, down the hollows of his face, thumbs over his lips. He ran his hands over the arms that were muscular, but due to lack of fat, rather than physical training. His chest and abs were the same way; Mayuri's body was ectomorphic as a whole, but it was sexy because it fit him. Akon reached down and ran his hand down his ribs, his lower back, and grabbed a hold of his ass. He started to pull Mayuri into him faster.

"Am I going too slow for you?" Mayuri said between his teeth. He slowed his pace down and rammed into Akon harder with each thrust.

Akon felt like his body was going to melt every time Mayuri hit his apex. "I just want you to use me hard. That's all. Right now…feels…amazing," he said between thrusts.

"Fair enough," said Mayuri "Let's try this way." He put Akon's other leg over his shoulder. "I'll go faster and even deeper. We'll see if you can handle it."

Akon couldn't help but cry out at the new pacing. The new angle of entry just made his body feel even more on fire than it already was. It was mesmerizing, the smack of skin on skin as Mayuri's skin hit his own with every thrust, wet sounding from that marvelous invention. Akon reached around Mayuri's back, fingernails scratching like a cat between his shoulder blades. Mayuri grinned as he drew blood, and he rewarded Akon, driving in harder, forcing Akon's legs tighter against his chest. Akon felt full to the point of bursting, like he could cum at any time but he hung there on that agonizing precipice.

Then it hit him; his ability to orgasm was chained up tightly with Mayuri. He needed to shoulder more of the work. Akon pulled Mayuri close to him, so that neither one could move. He panted, catching his breath. He met Mayuri's intense gaze.

"Flip me over," Akon whispered past the grate of his ear. "Let me do it for a while."

"You want to show off?" Mayuri teased.

"I want you to feel every inch." Akon squeezed the cock within him. Mayuri's eyes brightened.

The two rolled over, taking care not to separate, ending so that Akon straddled Mayuri, cradling his ribs between his thighs. Akon rocked his hips back and forth, arching his back as he rode Mayuri. Mayuri slid his hands up Akon's thighs and roughly scratched his way back down to his knees. Akon grinned and balanced on his feet, now using the thick muscles of his thighs to raise him up and down with even more power. Reaching behind him for balance, he pushed off athletically to spin around to face backwards.

There, now he was gifted with the sigh from Mayuri's lips. He felt Mayuri's hands clawing at his lower back, and he continued to fuck him steadily.

"Do you want to work on cumming with me?" Akon taunted. He was rewarded with a sharp slap on his ass.

Akon balanced himself again and turned with Mayuri inside him as an axis, catching the vacant eyed look that passed over Mayuri's face. It wasn't there for long, though. Mayuri surged into action, returning Akon to his back and driving into him.

"I'm going to use you to get me off. You're going to get off on me getting off," Mayuri whispered in his ear.

Akon pulled Mayuri close and kissed his neck and shoulders roughly, loving him with teeth as thoroughly as his tongue.

"I wouldn't have it any other way," he answered.

Now it was Mayuri at his throat, and Akon moaned at the rough attention he was given. Mayuri's rhythm grew faster and faster until he plunged in deep, the contractions of orgasm rocking his body. It was in that moment that Akon was also freed, the white hot sensation pooling in his hips released, a release that he felt burning in his chest, rendering his mind blank, with a power unlike anything he had ever known.

Akon rolled away from Mayuri, disengaging himself, breaths heaving as he tried to reconnect with his physical body. He lay there for a second, the reality of the moment starting to sink in. He was lying on Mayuri's futon, his stomach sticky with his own cum. He could feel the faint heat being given off by the body that lay beside him. He had been fucked by and fucked himself with Mayuri and both parties had come together of their own free will.

Akon laid on his back to stare at the ceiling. He stole a glance over to Mayuri. He saw a curious expression, the same one he had seen all those years ago, lying on the floor of the ransacked lab, that broken comprehension he had seen on his face when the reins of the 12th division entered his hands.

He understood, and he understood what Mayuri didn't understand. This kind of acknowledgement was enough. It was probably all that he would ever get, but Akon was proud of it, because he knew that he was the only one who could get it. It was fine. It was more than enough. Like he had wished for as a child, dreaming beside him in the night, all of that time; he alone was worthy of Mayuri's time.

Akon rolled his head to face Mayuri. "Hey, I'm gonna go clean up."

"Here." Mayuri handed him a small towel, and Akon used it to wipe up his stomach. He reached between his legs to clean there only to realize that there wasn't much of anything there.

Mayuri laughed.

"What?" said Akon.

"Did you expect me to give in to the finality of a male orgasm?"

"Huh?" Akon said, looking over at Mayuri with a raised eyebrow.

"Why leave the ability to have multiples to women? It may take men more time to master the cycles of sexual response, but any man can learn to decouple ejaculation from orgasm and have as many as he wants." Mayuri grinned.

Akon looked down and saw indeed that he was not lying. He swore under his breath but smiled the whole time.

"I assume that means you want to go again." Akon scooted over to him, so that they touched, skin on skin.

Mayuri grabbed a hold of Akon at the base, squeezing in a tight ring, willing the blood to trap itself again. Akon let out a soft sigh, his body responding to Mayuri's touch. He began to stroke the both of them with a hand, feeling the rigidity flow back into him.

Again, Akon worshipped his body, allowing himself to be steered, in an ebb and flow of lust and wanting. Each time he reached an apex, Mayuri pulled him back from it, again and again, until the threat of release was so great, he thought he might die. Mayuri within his body, within his mind, intertwined with his limbs. He couldn't tell anymore where Mayuri ended and he began.

"Now I'm ready," said Mayuri. "Any more will break you, I think."

Akon kissed Mayuri as he was released. He felt Mayuri cum inside him and again he was wiped out with that white-hot surrender.

Akon could have laid on that sweaty messy futon forever. While nothing was perfect, and it would never be, that didn't matter. They were both broken, fractured people. They were bound together by an ill-fated star. But none of that mattered now.

All that mattered was that he could be by his side. Finally, he was worthy.

xXx

Akon could see his breath in the chilly night air. The two shinigami stood alone in the thicket, everything illuminated by the flawless galaxy of stars above.

"It's been a while since I've been asked to do this," said Mayuri. He exhaled strongly through his nose, the steam looking as if it had come from an angry dragon instead.

"And what is 'this'?" Said Akon, all emotion consciously stripped from his voice.

He knew that Mayuri told more if he wasn't given a reaction—he took painful pride in his showmanship. Akon had been there so long he'd have to be an idiot not to know how to read him like an open book. But Mayuri had to know that too. The further Mayuri let him in, or at least seemed to, the more Akon wondered who was playing who.

"A surprise!" Mayuri said, voice trembling with excitement. "I promise you'll like it, even if it does get a bit messy. You know, like how it was with the Quincy project."

Akon furrowed his brow. Mayuri ran up to a large rock and pulled something green and slimy out of his pocket. He slammed it down on the stone and Akon watched fluorescent green lines of kidou energy extend in an octagonal pattern, one side forming a solid green wall right behind Akon. Akon slid a hand down the barrier that was warm to the touch. He could tell Mayuri had made it himself; the energy in it was so cloyingly his.

Mayuri perched himself on the rock. "What the hell are you doing over there? Come here!" He continued to mumble. "After all the trouble I go through to bring you out here…"

Akon smiled as he approached him. "Sorry, that was one hell of a barrier. Surely you understand an act of admiration."

Mayuri looked at him with that half-trusting look he knew all so well. Akon wondered who had betrayed him so badly. Perhaps the one who put him in the Nest? Nah, it didn't matter. This half-trust was even more precious as it was a hard-won thing. Mayuri relaxed as Akon sat next to him and he pulled a note out of his captain's haori. It was written in very broad calligraphy—the handwriting of the Captain Commander.

"The soul balance is skewed in the direction of 278 souls. Perhaps some were caused by Quincy we've missed. Maybe others were destroyed by otherworldly beings. It doesn't matter much to me." Mayuri sighed.

"Contained within this barrier are exactly 278 souls. This writ is from the Captain Commander authorizing the execution of every single one. Since he doesn't like to get his hands dirty, that's our job."

Akon knew it happened, but nobody ever really said what happened to the souls. After all, it was just the Rukongai, far from the concerns of the day to day of the Seireitei. It was the cruel truth that only people like him, like Mayuri, were lucid enough say.

"Uh, Director?" Akon said, scooting closer to Mayuri. "Is there a certain way we have to do it or can I test out some…products?"

Mayuri looked at Akon with a sheepish smile. "When Urahara took me with him to do this, he'd kill them as quickly as possible, saying that it was the closest he could give them to an honorable death. But let's be honest, he'd kill one by one instead of just using a spell to kill everyone at the same time instantaneously. Honorable my ass, he was twisted in his core, just like us."

Mayuri continued. "I'm more "honorable" than that. Inherently every death means something. If it improves the quality of our inventions, if it gives practice in combat, if it's aesthetically pleasing, I'm giving a gift that none of these pathetic souls even deserve." Mayuri focused his electric looking eyes on Akon. "I think you more than anyone can understand my feelings."

Akon slides a hand on top of Mayuri's, not breaking eye contact. "You're not wrong." Akon pondered everything he'd be able to do. "How often do you get permission for this?"

"Hmmm," Mayuri mused. "Once a year? It's certainly gone down since we culled the Quincy population. When we get over 200 souls out of balance, I send out a formal note. I usually take Nemu with me. But now you can never say that I don't take you anywhere nice. "

Akon grinned. "I'm guessing you've encased a town, and a few wanderers."

"Yes, it's not far from here, and I placed a lure on the road until the right number of people passed by." Mayuri tapped the knob on his ear. "Are you ready?"

The door on the tiny house was unlocked and Mayuri stepped in like a shadow. Akon followed behind him, staring over his shoulder at a family asleep in a bedroom.

"Did you bring the darts?" said Mayuri.

Akon grabbed a few from his pocket. "Yeah, these have the fixes that we made this morning."

"Well, what are you waiting for!? Try them out!" Mayuri snapped.

Akon rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah."

He threw them with a flourish, each one embedding itself into the torso of a sleeping body. Surprised faces woke up to see two shinigami in their bedroom. They struggled to get out of bed before they were frozen in place. The spirit particles that held their bodies together began to dissipate into the night air. It was too fast for them to even get a word out.

Mayuri laughed. "These work much faster than the earlier prototype!"

"Yeah, I mixed these with more soul chelating fluid than the others." Akon handed a spare to Mayuri.

Mayuri scrutinized the tip before putting it into a pocket. "Hmm. I guess it will be somebody's lucky day."

Akon walked out of the front door and padded down the street to the next house.

"I brought a few surprises of my own. Go test out the new soul grenades over there." Mayuri pointed in the direction Akon was already headed. "I'm heading to the other side of the street."

Akon watched Mayuri disappear into a house across the way from him, using his zanpakuto to pry the door open. Akon pulled one of the grenades he had brought, pulled the pin and lobbed it into the open window. After a brief pause the air was rocked with a booming explosion; the house was now on fire.

As he turned to move on, he heard scratching. Some poor soul had pushed the front door open and was trying to crawl out, one of his legs destroyed. He looked at Akon, eyes beseeching.

"Why?" he asked weakly.

Akon opened his mouth, but he didn't really know what to say. The man reached out and began to speak, again until a dart went flying past Akon and imbedded itself in the man's forehead. Like the ones before him, the man sublimated into the air.

"I hate it when they start talking, so annoying," said Mayuri. "I mean, we're here for a reason. It's our job. Why else would shinigami be in the middle of nowhere at 3 AM in the Rukongai!?"

"Why are you over here?" said Akon. "I thought you were doing stuff on the other side of the street."

Mayuri tilted his head. "I was. You're slow. I used the new gas I made that liquefies subjects from the inside out." He sighed. "It's hard to contain the gas in a manner that provides the wielder with safety. With my reiatsu I could keep it at bay, but I'm not sure if anyone below vice captain class could keep up enough pressure. I have some ideas to fix it, though. Anyway, those darts are far more efficient."

Akon laughed. Mayuri was already searching him for spirit grenades.

"Hey, hands to yourself. We're not done yet," Akon joked.

Mayuri bristled and yanked away two grenades. "Well, since you couldn't get them all with one, try for two." He stuck them against the side of the house before moving to a safe distance.

This time the explosion was huge! Akon squinted at the burning remains of house, not seeing anywhere untouched by the tongues of flame.

The people started to flow into the streets, the different explosions drawing them out. There were mothers herding crying children in their pajamas, farmers wielding shovels and hoes, rough hooligans who were looking for a fight in the first place.

"Oh hell, it always comes down to this at the end," Mayuri sighed. "Time to test something else."

Akon watched as he fiddled with his ear, and a slimy looking scythe attached to a cord appeared in his hand.

"Watch this," Mayuri purred.

Mayuri threw the blade at a middle-aged man and it ripped into his abdomen. As Mayuri pulled the cord, the blade disemboweled the man, leaving him with a surprised face as he sunk to his knees without much left in his abdominal cavity. Mayuri laughed as he caught the blade and shook off the blood.

"It's really quite fast and effective," he continued as he took down three other civilians, children who were all holding hands.

"I can make one for you if you'd like. I can put it anywhere on your body, it's not limited to where I put mine." Mayuri started panting as he spoke. Akon put his hand on Mayuri's back and took the blade from his hand.

"It seems like it's a little heavy still," said Akon. He posed with it, feeling its heft as he moved. "You're already out of breath. Just consider it, anyway. You've already been running around."

"Yes, I did mean to make the shaft hollow, actually, but I was worried about sturdiness. But that's why we test these things out." Mayuri grinned and took it back from Akon, shoving it back into his ear.

Now even more people were being drawn out of the houses from the screaming and moaning of people being maimed. They were only two shinigami, if they weren't careful, things could get ugly, for Akon at least.

"Was there something else you wanted to do?" Akon asked.

"No. It's time to do this the old fashioned way." Mayuri pulled out his zanpakutou. "Rip, Ashisogi Jizou."

The blade transformed into the familiar trident, with the bulbous head of a child at the guard. The crowd closing in on them stopped and stared at the bizarre-looking man holding an even stranger weapon.

Mayuri looked at Akon. "Actually I'm bored of this and I'd like to go home. It's overkill, but it's been a while since I've done a full release."

"Trying to show off for me?" Akon joked.

"If I remember right, you were one of the flies spying on my bankai exam. You were a terrible liar."

"I beg your pardon?" Akon pulled a bomb out of his labcoat. "I remember telling the truth and getting two hours of extra work for it," he scoffed.

"I'd never seen your ears turn that exact shade of red when I walked by you, after I came back. I didn't even have to ask," Mayuri fleered.

Akon looked down at his feet and smiled. "We've been together too long. You're getting sappy."

"Don't delude yourself. There are many activities that I can get pleasure out of that you most certainly will not. Remember that before you speak." Mayuri whacked Akon in the hip with his empty sword sheath. "Now I'm going to finish this job. Help if you want."

He held his zanpakuto in front of him, holding the head below the tines close to his face, leaning into it lovingly. He breathed in deeply, taking in the poison that the mouth spouted.

"Bankai. Konjiki Ashisogi Jizou," he whispered.

Akon flinched as the giant caterpillar-like monstrosity formed by Mayuri's side, stretching both in front of him and behind him. The stopped crowd of people suddenly recoiled in fear and started to run in the other direction. He took the bomb in his hands and lobbed it into the running crowd. It exploded, the resultant mangled body parts further tripping up the already stumbling masses.

Mayuri laughed. "That was a good idea. The looks, the screams, the fear…doesn't it make you feel so _alive_?"

Akon walked with Mayuri, side by side, a slow march forward behind Ashisogi Jizou. He didn't feel much of anything. Like the bomb had just been fireworks, something far away falling from the sky that he could never touch. He was so used to death and dying and torture. The children, the old people, the helpless falling…he didn't care. He wondered, had he ever? Was that why they had locked him away all those years ago?

"I guess it does," said Akon.

"Sometimes, you're a hard man to please." Mayuri shook his head. He controlled his bankai to zip into the crowd from the side and stabbed at them with the blades at its chest.

"Nah," said Akon. "I can do this stuff back in the lab and I don't need the Captain Commander's permission to do it."

"I see, a realist," said Mayuri.

With the masses of people lying down on the ground poisoned, bleeding to death or crushed, Mayuri started to use his giant creature to knock down the houses and other buildings in the village. The noxious fumes that poured from its mouth went into the wreckage, into the range of any possible survivors.

"You've got to find happiness somehow, otherwise you wake up one day and wonder why you're alive in the first place," Mayuri mused.

"I know." Akon grinned impishly. Actually, I know exactly why I wake up in the morning."

"Oh?" Mayuri looked at him questioningly.

"Yeah," said Akon flatly. "It means you didn't kill me in my sleep."

Mayuri's laughter echoed in the now wide open space.

"Come now, you should know that even _I'm_ not that draconian."

"Yeah, I know," said Akon as he stretched. "There's a lot of people who do think that, though."

Mayuri waved a hand. "Let them. They're the boring ones anyway."

Akon surveyed all of the damage around them. Nothing remained of the town except for splinters. The mass of bodies was being dissolved by the sheer amount of poison that had been pumped into them. He wondered whether there were any more people hiding in the surrounding forest. He didn't have his soul detecting equipment on him, and there was obviously no other person with reiatsu besides Mayuri in the vicinity.

Akon slowed his walk, falling behind Mayuri. His whole body was starting to ache and he felt dizzy. He shook his head. It was as if his mind was trying to cloud over. Mayuri still walked ahead of him, still chatting about something, but Akon couldn't focus in on what he was saying. He stopped, his muscles stiff and unresponsive; he dropped, kneeling on the ground. What was this?

Akon coughed. There was the taste of blood in his mouth.

"Akon! I was talking to you!" Mayuri yelled as he spun around, just now noticing that he was alone. "Akon?"

Akon looked at him quizzically. "I was with you. I didn't breathe in your poison," he gasped.

Mayuri gaped at him in disbelief. "My poison doesn't have to be inhaled, Akon. But I guess you wouldn't have known…"

Akon collapsed further onto the ground. "Why didn't you say something?"

Mayuri shook his head. "I knew I should have brought Nemu, even though you hate it when she watches."

He reached into his coat and pulled out a bottle of antidote. He looked at Akon's prone form and sighed, kneeling and gathering Akon up onto his knees.

Akon reached up to take the bottle but his hands shook wildly as his nerve impulses fired erratically from the poison. Mayuri held onto the bottle, steadily raising it to Akon's lips. Akon accepted the care, drinking the bitter antidote until the flask was empty. He hung there in Mayuri's arms, waiting for the medicine to work, nestling into him.

Akon laughed.

"What?" Mayuri was not amused.

"Right now," Akon breathed, "that's the most alive I've felt in a long time." He gulped. "Something about being that close to death always reminds me how I'm alive."

Strength returning, Akon sat up.

"Yes," said Mayuri. "I know that feeling, too."

Akon grabbed at Mayuri's shoulder. "Here," he said. "Now. While I feel like this."

"So this is what does it for you?" Mayuri demurred as he looked at the ruined town around them. "Are you sure you can enjoy it like this?"

"Don't patronize me." Akon grinned. "Do your worst."

In the smoking remains of the village, in the eerie quiet, two men kissed ferociously, raw-graceful beneath the stars. They were monsters and shadow, the noise and the echo. They waxed and waned beneath one another, one blending into the next, cyclical and whole.

Now they were both alive.

xXx

The breeze whispered in, chilling the exposed sliver of skin. Akon pulled the blanket around him tighter, but the end was flipped over on top of him, rather than to the side. He was alone in the bed; alone with this thoughts. Akon looked around—the door to the patio was open. Carefully he stood up, wrapping the blanket over his bare skin, and headed to where the starlight flooded in.

There stood Mayuri, leaning against the railing. He was only half dressed, wearing nothing but his captian's haori; the paint was missing, and the pockets of his haori were empty. It was hard to reconcile all of the faces of this man, the painted and the bare, the wiriness and the bulk, the joy and the rage. This one here was rarely shown.

"Can't sleep?" Akon padded onto the patio.

"I never do," said Mayuri. "It's a waste of 8 hours."

In his hand was a cigarette, balanced gracefully between the two spidery fingers. The smoke diffused, swirling into the night air.

"I didn't know you smoked," said Akon.

"I don't." Mayuri stared absently out into the night. He exhaled, the smoke pouring out in a steady stream. "It is foolish to play with addiction," he said flatly.

Akon knew better than to ask why. Like always, everything that he said or did was for a reason, often just for show.

Mayuri gestured at Akon's half covered body with the cigarette. "This is what people do after this sort of thing, isn't it?" He flicked the base, ashes scattering off in a shower of sparks. "And I can always make a new pair of lungs."

He reached into a pocket in his sleeve and produced another one, handing it to Akon. "Have you ever had one?"

Akon shook his head.

A smug smile crossed Mayuri's face. "Well, there's always a first time for everything."

Yes there was, and there was a last, too. Everything that had a beginning eventually had an end. The universe, animals great and small, ideas, regimes, emotions and fame, all born and die like a puff of smoke…

"Put the tip of yours to mine and then breathe in through it," instructed Mayuri. Akon bent forward, the proximity to the man making his skin tingle. He was at that awkward range of closeness between people, the sacred space reserved only for either fighting or fucking. He closed his eyes and sucked the air through…

It was like sandpaper in his lungs. Akon coughed, hitting his fist to his chest, his throat burning.

"Figures," said Mayuri. "I don't understand why people fail the first time." He sighed. "Take it slower."

Akon took another drag on the cigarette, this time more shallow. It still itched a bit, but now it was a little different. He blew out the smoke and puffed again. He felt himself relax, his head a bit airy, the earthy taste of tobacco and clove stained his lower lip.

He looked again at Mayuri. The man was powerful, dangerous, his usually painted face serving as a warning marker like a poisonous snake. But he had to wonder when the man had gotten so small…when the shoulders had gotten so slight, his frame so thin. Without the bulk of the full uniform, it was as if he could fit inside of Akon's form twice. He could see the tiredness in his face from too many late nights spent crunching numbers, theorizing, or worrying about experimental outcomes. Like if he pushed him over, he would sleep for a thousand years.

Akon remembered what it was like to look up his sleeves, what it was like to feel his shoulder being dwarfed by his delicate, yet strong hands. Perhaps this was exactly what growing up was; It was to watch your heroes shrink and become real. Or perhaps attaining godhood was innately disappointing.

Mayuri's cigarette had burned all the way through the wrapper and he crushed it out on the fence post before incinerating the butt with a burst of his reiryoku.

"I've got work to do, and you do too." Mayuri turned on a heel. "But it seems that unlike you, I actually intend to get to it."

Akon smiled as he watched his captain stomp away.

A swath of thick clouds passed in front of the starry sky. The darkness still spoke to him, like it had when he was a child, only now his own inner voice howled and screamed back at it, subduing the madness. Verklärte nacht.

He looked at the burning ember of his cigarette, the red-orange fire a stark contrast from the dark of the night, the sunrise in a microcosm. He licked his fingers and extinguished the tip. The night surrounded him in its place.

He stared out at the black, cloudy, new moon sky. Now the dark was afraid of him.


	4. Useful

This is a deleted scene from Afraid of the Dark, in the 3rd chapter, Michikake.

It's small, cute, and sweet, and it was far too short to have a place in Afraid of the Dark, so I present it to you here.

Warning: Bondage, Forced Orgasm and Fluff

* * *

><p>Akon lay on the giant lab table, still panting and flushed. He was restrained in the vivisection apparatus, collar holding him down, wrists held hard at the corners of the table. His legs were strapped into the scaffold at his ankles and his knees, so it held him completely open.<p>

Orgasm had been called la petit mort, the little death, and here he reached climax again and again using the same equipment on the table where the bigger death happened more times than he could count. His body was covered in sweat, his hair sticking to him, and if it weren't for the scaffolding, he was sure he would collapse. Sometimes it was a hand, fingers. Other times it was a tongue, or a cock surging into him. Other times it was toys that buzzed, spun, or electrified him. Something that stretched him to limits he never thought the body possible of. But his favorite was when he received pleasure from both the organic and the synthetic.

Mayuri finally walked up the side of the table to where Akon's head was restrained. He looked at him fondly and ran his cooler hand down the side of Akon's face. Warmth filled Akon's chest. Did he still have traces of that aphrodisiac in him, or did his body really just call out for him this much? At this point, he didn't care. What was the point?

Mayuri looked down at him, his golden teeth fixed in a big grin. "I find you incredibly useful. One of the most useful beings I have ever known."

Akon raised an eyebrow. "Good to be counted among that number, along with the dead rats in the bin over there."

Mayuri frowned. "And people say I'm never nice."

"I think I know what you meant to say," Akon said.

Mayuri tilted his head. "I always mean exactly what I say. Are you going somewhere with this, Akon?"

"Shut up," Akon closed his eyes and sighed.

Mayuri threw his hands in the air. "See? And this is exactly why I'm never nice!"


End file.
